State v. Crump

376 N.C. 375

851 S.E.2d 904

STATE of North Carolina

v.Ramar Dion Benjamin CRUMP

No. 151PA18

Supreme Court of North Carolina.

Filed December 18, 2020

Joshua H. Stein, Attorney General, by Mary Carla Babb, Assistant Attorney General, for the State-appellee.

Ann B. Petersen, Chapel Hill, for defendant-appellant.

EARLS, Justice.

This case requires us to determine whether the Court of Appeals erred by finding no error in the judgments arising from an incident involving a black male defendant who exchanged gunshots with two officers from the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police Department. Without deciding whether or not the trial court abused its discretion when it "flatly prohibited questioning as to issues of race and implicit bias during voir dire, " State v. Crump , 259 N.C. App. 144, 145, 815 S.E.2d 415, 417 (2018), and "categorically denied [defendant] the opportunity to question prospective jurors not only about a specific police officer shooting, but also even generally about their opinions and/or biases regarding police officer shootings of (specifically) black men," id. at 155, 815 S.E.2d at 423, the Court of Appeals held that "[o]n the specific facts of the instant case ... the trial court's rulings were not ultimately prejudicial to defendant," id. at 156, 815 S.E.2d at 424. We conclude that the trial court did abuse its discretion and that the trial court's improper restrictions on defendant's questioning during voir dire did prejudice defendant. Accordingly, we reverse.

Background

At around 3:00 a.m. on 24 September 2013, two black men gained entry to an office suite where about a dozen people were participating in an underground poker game. Both men were armed. The men forced most of the poker players to undress and barricaded them in a restroom. The men then proceeded to ransack the office suite and steal the poker players’ clothing, wallets, cell phones, personal identification cards, credit cards, debit cards, and cash.

A few days later, one of the organizers of the underground poker game, Gary Smith, devised a plan to identify the robbers. He knew that one of the robbery victims, Matios Tegegne, had not cancelled the service for his stolen cell phone, hoping to track its location. Smith sent a text message to a group that included Tegegne providing fake information about an upcoming poker game. When someone responded to Smith's text message from Tegegne's cell phone number, Smith provided that person with details of an invented poker game (the "bait game") at a mixed-use office and commercial building at 1801 N. Tryon Street in Charlotte. Smith planned to confront the person using the victim's cell phone—ostensibly, one of the perpetrators of the 24 September 2013 robbery—if and when he arrived at the bait game.

Early on the morning of 29 September 2013, three black males—Jamel Lewis, Warren Lewis, and defendant Ramar Crump—arrived at 1801 N. Tryon Street in defendant's silver Mustang. Defendant was driving. After receiving a text message from Tegegne's phone number seeking to confirm the address of the bait game, Smith pulled his own vehicle into the parking lot in front of the building. At this point, Smith saw defendant's silver Mustang, pulled closer, and noticed that defendant was armed. Rather than confronting the occupants of the vehicle himself, Smith drove to a nearby Amtrak station parking lot and called 911 to report "a suspicious vehicle ... occupied by at least two black males [who] appeared [to be] loading up guns." Meanwhile, defendant drove the Mustang to a rear parking area of the complex.

After receiving Smith's 911 call, four officers with the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police Department—Anthony Holzhauer, David Sussman, Jason Allen, and Luke Amos—were dispatched to 1801 N. Tryon Street. The officers were advised that there were at least two black men inside a silver Mustang in the parking lot with loaded firearms, intending to commit a robbery. Each officer arrived alone in a marked patrol vehicle. Each officer parked his patrol vehicle in a lower portion of the parking lot, out of view from the rear parking lot. None of the officers activated the lights or sirens on his patrol vehicle.

After investigating and clearing a man in a different silver vehicle near the parking lot entrance, Officer Holzhauer and Officer Sussman walked to the rear parking lot. Officer Holzhauer was carrying a shotgun. Officer Sussman was carrying his service weapon. They observed two dump trucks parked parallel to one another, approximately four feet apart and next to a building, and defendant's silver Mustang, parked perpendicular to the rear of the two trucks and facing away from the building. The officers wanted to approach the vehicle surreptitiously in order to investigate its occupants without being detected, so they decided to walk between the two dump trucks, believing that the path would lead them to the rear of defendant's vehicle. Instead, their route brought them directly to the Mustang's passenger-side window. The officers could not see inside the vehicle because the windows were tinted. They did not affirmatively identify themselves as police officers.

Defendant and the officers would later dispute what happened next. What is undisputed is that there was an exchange of gunshots between defendant and the officers. One of the bullets hit one of the dump truck's side-view mirrors, right near Officer Holzhauer's head. Officer Holzhauer and Officer Sussman sought cover in front of one of the dump trucks. Defendant started the Mustang and sought to escape. To exit the parking lot, he drove the Mustang around the side of the dump truck where Officer Holzhauer and Officer Sussman were sheltering. Believing that they were being ambushed, Officer Holzhauer and Officer Sussman began shooting at the Mustang as it passed. Defendant eventually steered his vehicle, which sustained a shattered passenger-side window and a shot-out passenger-side front tire, out of the parking lot. Officer Amos and Officer Allen pursued the Mustang in their patrol vehicles, with the lights and sirens of their vehicles now activated. They were eventually joined in pursuit by other officers from the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police Department, the North Carolina Highway Patrol, the Cabarrus County Sherriff's Office, and the City of Concord Police Department.

According to defendant, it was only after he exited 1801 N. Tryon Street that he realized he had exchanged gunshots with law enforcement officers. He began to fear that he "might not make it out of this one" alive and called his mother to say his final goodbyes. While driving down Route 49 into Cabarrus County, defendant and the occupants of the Mustang put their hands and a white t-shirt out the windows, in an apparent effort to signal their intent to surrender. Defendant also called 911 to explain the situation, in the hopes of figuring out a way to surrender without getting shot at by the pursuing officers. However, defendant never stopped his vehicle. Eventually, law enforcement officers deployed stop sticks and blew out the Mustang's tires. Defendant, Jamel Lewis, and Warren Lewis were all arrested.

Law enforcement officers proceeded to search defendant's Mustang. Inside the driver's seat, they found a six-shot .38-caliber revolver and six spent shell casings. Inside the glove box, they found a cell phone, a knife, a wallet with defendant's identification inside, wristwatches, credit cards, and various forms of identification. Inside the trunk, they found two rifles and an additional revolver, a bag containing four cellphones, and a bag containing more credit cards, debit cards, and identification cards along with mail addressed to defendant. It was later determined that the credit cards, debit cards, and personal identifications found in the interior and trunk of the Mustang belonged to victims of the underground poker game robbery committed on 24 September 2013.

A grand jury indicted defendant on eleven counts of robbery with a dangerous weapon, eleven counts of second-degree kidnapping, one count of conspiracy to commit robbery with a dangerous weapon, and one count of possession of a firearm by a felon for his alleged role in the events of 24 September 2013. He was indicted on two counts of assault with a deadly weapon with intent to kill (AWDWIK), two counts of assault on a law enforcement officer with a firearm, and one count of possession of a firearm by a felon arising from his 29 September 2013 confrontation with Officer Holzhauer and Officer Sussman.

At trial, the State and defendant offered differing accounts of both incidents. According to the State, defendant was one of the two black men who robbed the underground poker game at gunpoint on 24 September 2013. The State relied upon testimony from six victims of the poker game robbery who all identified defendant as one of the two perpetrators of the robbery, although the victims offered varying accounts of defendant's precise role in the events of that night. Defendant claimed instead that he lent Jamel Lewis his Mustang on the evening of 23 September 2013 and that Jamel committed the robbery with his brother, Warren Lewis, without defendant's knowledge or permission.

According to the State, defendant came to 1801 N. Tryon Street on 29 September 2013 with the intention of robbing the bait game. Officer Holzhauer and Officer Sussman testified that defendant fired first, unprovoked. Defendant claimed that he drove his Mustang to 1801 N. Tryon Street at Warren's urging, intending only to "check out" the poker game. He testified that as he was sitting in the Mustang, he saw the silhouette of a man with a long gun aimed at him, heard gunshots, and felt an impact on the passenger side of his car. At this point, fearing for his life, defendant testified that he returned fire with the .38-caliber revolver that he always stored in his vehicle.

At the close of the State's evidence, the trial court dismissed two of the robbery with a...