State v. Thomas

905 S.E.2d 106

STATE of North Carolina

v.Quantez Lashay THOMAS

No. COA23-774

Court of Appeals of North Carolina.

Filed August 6, 2024

Appeal by defendant from judgments entered 19 August 2022 by Judge R. Stuart Albright in Guilford County Superior Court. Heard in the Court of Appeals 15 May 2024. Guilford County, Nos. 19 CRS 24225, 67599, 67601, 67750–51, 67844

Attorney General Joshua H. Stein, by Assistant Attorney General Benjamin T. Spangler, for the State.

Gilda C. Rodriguez, for defendant-appellant.

ZACHARY, Judge.

Defendant Quantez Lashay Thomas appeals from judgments entered upon a jury’s verdicts finding him guilty of possession of a stolen motor vehicle, misdemeanor operation of a motor vehicle to elude arrest, two counts of breaking or entering a motor vehicle, two counts of misdemeanor larceny, two counts of financial transaction card theft, and attaining the status of a habitual felon. After careful review, we conclude that Defendant received a fair trial, free from prejudicial error.

I. Background

This case returns to this Court after Defendant received a new trial upon his first appeal. See State v. Thomas (Thomas I), 281 N.C. App. 722, 868 S.E.2d 176, 2022 WL 453450 (2022) (unpublished). The full procedural history of Defendant’s first trial can be found in this Court’s prior opinion in this matter. See id. at *1–*3. We recite here only those background and procedural facts relevant to the issues presented in this appeal.

The charges for which Defendant was tried arose from a series of vehicle-related crimes in and around High Point. On 17 January 2019, Kari Rhodes noticed that her Nissan Altima was missing from the parking lot of her apartment complex. On 21 January 2019, Angela Marion was leaving a gym with her husband when she noticed that the window on the passenger’s side of their car had been broken, and her purse had been taken from the vehicle. Ms. Marion kept two credit cards in her wallet within her purse. When she called to cancel those credit cards, she learned that they had already been used, with hundreds of dollars of purchases having been charged to each card.

Officer Kaylyn Stewart¹ of the High Point Police Department ("HPPD") investigated the use of Ms. Marion’s credit cards at several businesses. Among them was a Walmart on South Main Street in High Point. A Walmart loss-prevention associate retrieved surveillance video footage from the evening of 21 January 2019—when Ms. Marion’s card was used—and captured some still photographs from the footage. Officer Stewart later testified about the appearance of the suspect in the surveillance video footage, including, among other details, that the suspect was wearing a camouflage jacket.

On 25 January 2019, Alondra McGill was cleaning an office with her aunt, Teresa Perez. In her van, Ms. Perez had a pair of Nike sneakers that had been delivered to her home for Ms. McGill. After the women finished cleaning, they went to Ms. Perez’s van and noticed several items missing, including the Nike sneakers, Ms. Perez’s purse, and some cleaning supplies. Ms. McGill would later testify that she never saw the Nike sneakers, that she never gave anyone else permission to take the shoes, and that Ms. Perez had never given anyone permission to enter her van.

HPPD officers investigating the breaking or entering and larceny from Ms. Perez’s van obtained surveillance video footage showing Ms. Perez’s van in the adjacent parking lot. After reviewing the footage, which showed a man entering Ms. Perez’s van and removing items from it, the officers identified Defendant as a suspect.

On 6 February 2019, an HPPD officer recognized Defendant driving a Nissan Altima. The officer initiated a traffic stop by activating the lights and siren, but Defendant sped away in excess of the speed limit, and the officer did not pursue him. The officer found the Altima later that night, apparently abandoned. Upon further investigation, he confirmed by the VIN number that the Altima had been reported stolen by Ms. Rhodes’s husband. Officer Stewart responded to the scene of the abandoned Altima and discovered, inter alia, a pair of Nike shoes and a camouflage jacket inside the car. Once her car was recovered, Ms. Rhodes did not recall if anything was missing from it, but she noticed several items inside that had not previously been present in the car, including the coat and the shoes.

On 22 July 2019, a Guilford County grand jury returned true bills of indictment, charging Defendant with the following offenses: three counts of obtaining property by false pretenses; three counts of financial transaction card theft; two counts of breaking or entering a motor vehicle; felony larceny; possession of a stolen motor vehicle; felonious fleeing to elude arrest with a motor vehicle; three counts of misdemeanor larceny; and attaining the status of habitual felon. On 11 February 2020, the matter came on for trial. Id. at *3. The jury found Defendant guilty of 13 of the charged offenses, and the trial court consolidated the convictions into two judgments.

In the first judgment, the trial court consolidated the felony larceny with convictions for breaking or entering a motor vehicle, possession of a stolen motor vehicle, and two counts of obtaining property by false pretenses; in this judgment, the trial court sentenced Defendant as a prior record level III offender with habitual felon status to a term of 67 to 93 months’ imprisonment in the custody of the North Carolina Division of Adult Correction. In the second judgment, the court consolidated the second breaking or entering a motor vehicle conviction with the third conviction of breaking or entering a motor vehicle, three counts of financial transaction card theft, two counts of misdemeanor larceny, and misdemeanor fleeing to elude arrest with a motor vehicle; in this judgment, the trial court sentenced Defendant as a prior record level III offender with habitual felon status to a consecutive term of 26 to 44 months.² Defendant appealed, and on 15 February 2022 this Court filed its opinion in Thomas I, in which we ordered a new trial. Id. at *5.

On remand, the matter came on for a new trial on 15 August 2022. The State’s evidence included, inter alia, surveillance video footage of Ms. Perez’s van during the incident in question and testimony by Officer Stewart, in which she identified Defendant as the individual in that footage. At the close of the State’s evidence, the State took a voluntary dismissal of one count of misdemeanor larceny and two counts of obtaining property by false pretenses. The trial court then granted Defendant’s motion to dismiss in part, as to one count of financial transaction card theft, and further ruled that the State could not proceed with the felony larceny charge but could prosecute the offense as an additional count of misdemeanor larceny.

The jury generally found Defendant guilty as charged, except for finding him guilty of misdemeanor rather than felony operation of a motor vehicle to elude arrest and finding him not guilty of the count of misdemeanor larceny that had been initially charged as a felony. The jury also found that Defendant had attained the status of a habitual felon.

On 19 August 2022, the trial court again consolidated the various convictions into two judgments. In the first judgment, the trial court consolidated the possession of a stolen motor vehicle conviction with one conviction for breaking or entering a motor vehicle, and attaining habitual felon status, and sentenced Defendant as a prior record level III offender to a term of 67 to 93 months’ imprisonment. In the second judgment, which included the other conviction for breaking or entering a motor vehicle among the remaining convictions, the trial court accepted the State’s argument that all of the elements of the breaking or entering conviction were included in one of Defendant’s prior offenses and added an additional point to Defendant’s prior record level, raising him to a prior record level IV offender. Accordingly, the trial court sentenced Defendant as a prior record level IV offender with habitual felon status to a term of 30 to 48 months’ imprisonment.

Defendant gave notice of appeal in open court.

II. Discussion

Defendant contends that the trial court: (1) "erred when it denied [Defendant's] motion to dismiss the breaking [or] entering a motor vehicle and misdemeanor larceny charges" relating to Ms. Perez "because the State presented insufficient evidence of lack of consent"; (2) "committed plain error … when it allowed the lay witness opinions of Officer Stewart as to what and whom surveillance videos and photographs depicted"; and (3) "erred when it sentenced [Defendant] to a sentence more severe than the prior vacated sentence in violation of N.C. Gen. Stat. § 15A-1335."

A. Motion to Dismiss

Defendant first argues that the trial court erred by denying his motion to dismiss the charges in 19 CRS 67750: one count each of breaking or entering a motor vehicle and misdemeanor larceny, both relating to Ms. Perez’s vehicle. Defendant alleges that the State "failed to present sufficient evidence of an essential element of the charges"—namely, "lack of consent"—because Ms. Perez did not testify at trial. We disagree.

1. Standard of Review

[1, 2] "We review de novo a trial court’s denial of a motion to dismiss a criminal charge for insufficient evidence." State v. Gibson, 277 N.C. App. 623, 624, 859 S.E.2d 253, 254 (2021). When conducting de novo review, this Court "consider[s] the matter anew and freely substitut[es] our own judgment for that of the trial court." State v. Edgerton, 266 N.C. App. 521, 532, 832 S.E.2d 249, 257 (2019), disc. review denied, 375 N.C. 496, 847 S.E.2d 886 (2020).

[3, 4] "In reviewing a motion to dismiss based on insufficiency of the evidence, our inquiry is whether there is substantial evidence (1) of each essential element of the offense charged, and (2) of defendant’s being the perpetrator of such...