STATE OF NORTH CAROLINA
v. Durham County
No. 00 CRS 63440
EDWARD MAURICE WADDELL,
Defendant.
Attorney General Roy Cooper, by Special Deputy Attorney
General Mabel Y. Bullock, for the State.
Mary March Exum, for defendant-appellant.
HUDSON, Judge.
On 30 October 2000, the Durham County grand jury indicted
defendant on charges of assault with a deadly weapon with intent to
kill inflicting serious injury and with felony child abuse-serious
injury. At trial beginning on 2 July 2001, the State introduced
evidence tending to show the following:
On 27 August 2000, the maternal grandmother of three-month-old
Dominique Waddell (victim) cared for him from approximately noon
until 7:00 p.m. She described the victim as a normal healthy baby.
Tameka Jones, the victim's mother, took him home at that time. Ms.
Jones noticed nothing out of the ordinary and indicated the victim
ate and slept normally that evening. When she left for workbetween 6:30 and 6:45 a.m. the next morning, the victim was in bed
with Edward M. Waddell (defendant). Ms. Jones did not notice
anything out of the ordinary.
Ms. Jones called defendant at 10:15 a.m. and asked how the
victim was doing. She also asked to speak to the victim.
Defendant said the victim was fine, but could not talk to her
because he could not locate the cordless telephone. About thirty
or forty-five minutes later, Ms. Jones received a voice mail from
defendant. She said defendant “sounded like something was wrong,”
and he stated the victim had fallen and busted his lip. Ms. Jones
immediately called defendant, who said that he had stopped the
victim's lip from bleeding and that she did not need to come home.
Ms. Jones immediately told her supervisor that she needed to leave
because of an emergency at home.
Ms. Jones arrived at home about fifteen or twenty minutes
later. She saw defendant in the kitchen, but continued on to the
bedroom where the victim was lying on a pillow. Ms. Jones noticed
the victim “was cold as ice, and he looked strange.” When she
picked him up, he started making a moaning noise. She began crying
and tried to call 911. Ms. Jones said defendant, whom she
described as acting hysterical, was trying to take the telephone
out of her hand because she was acting too hysterical. EMS workers
arrived about ten minutes later at 12:11 p.m. and transported the
victim to the emergency room.
Dr. Karen Sue St. Claire testified that the victim had
suffered a very severe head injury. Areas of his brain were dying,and the damage extended from both frontal lobes to the cerebrum.
He had a skull fracture on the left side of the skull and a small
area of very recent bleeding in the back of his head between his
brain and skull. The victim also had extensive retinal
hemorrhaging in both eyes. Dr. St. Claire testified the injuries
were consistent with very violent shaking of the victim with
extreme rotational forces with his head for ten to twenty seconds.
Given “the constellation of findings that this child had,” Dr. St.
Claire stated she was unable to come up with a diagnosis other than
Shaken Impact Syndrome. She opined that the victim was not injured
the preceding evening because he could not have survived the injury
if he had not received medical treatment within a couple of hours.
Dr. St. Claire said the victim would have “become symptomatic
probably within minutes or very shortly within half an hour to an
hour” after being injured. She stated the victim now had severe
cerebral palsy and would be severely mentally and developmentally
delayed. Children with similar head injuries live at most to their
late teens or early twenties.
Ms. Jones related that she and defendant “were having problems
even before the baby was born . . . .” Two days before the victim
was hospitalized, Ms. Jones had told defendant that one of them was
going to have to move out of the apartment. When asked if
defendant had ever said anything about how she treated the victim,
she stated defendant had said she treated the victim “like he was
a god.” The maternal grandmother testified she heard defendant say
“I did it” while at Duke Medical Center on 29 August 2000 and atDr. St. Claire's office on 30 August 2000, and Ms. Jones heard
defendant make the same comment on 30 August 2000. Both witnesses
described defendant as crying at the time they heard him make the
statements. Defendant made a motion to dismiss the charges at the
close of the State's evidence, which the trial court denied.
Defendant testified the victim usually awakened around 8:00
a.m., but did not awaken until around 10:00 a.m. on 28 August 2000.
After trying to feed the victim, defendant began to give him a
bath. The victim arched out of defendant's hands after water and
soap ran into his face and hit his mouth on the edge of the plastic
bathtub. He called Ms. Jones at work and told her that something
was wrong with the victim and that the victim had hit his lip on
the tub. When she asked if she needed to come home, defendant said
“If your job will let you come home, then come home.” Defendant
told Ms. Jones that the victim was “doing fine right now,” and the
victim was asleep when Ms. Jones arrived. It was only after she
picked the victim up that they started noticing the change.
Defendant indicated he was the only person in the apartment
with the victim that morning. He denied hitting the victim in the
face and denied ever shaking the victim. Defendant further denied
making the “I did it” comment. He suggested a baby sitter could
have caused the victim's injuries, and he mentioned that the victim
had fallen off of a bed onto a carpeted floor on 20 August 2000.
Defendant renewed his earlier motion to dismiss, and the trial
court again denied the motion.
The jury subsequently found defendant to be guilty of thelesser included offense of assault with a deadly weapon inflicting
serious injury and of felonious child abuse resulting in serious
injury. During the sentencing hearing, defendant addressed the
trial court and denied harming the victim. After finding factors
in aggravation and mitigation, the trial court commented in open
court that “defendant's account of how his child got injured in his
custody was simply not only not believable, it was unbelievable.”
The trial court then concluded that the factors in aggravation
outweighed the factors in mitigation and imposed consecutive
sentences of 36 to 53 months imprisonment. From the trial court's
judgments, defendant appeals.
Defendant first contends the trial court erred by denying the
motion to dismiss the charges which he made at the close of the
State's evidence. He argues the State failed to produce
substantial evidence of every element of the crimes and that he was
the perpetrator. This argument is without merit.
By introducing evidence after the State rested its case,
defendant's “motion for dismissal . . . made at the close of
State's evidence is waived. Such a waiver precludes the defendant
from urging the denial of such motion as a ground for appeal.”
N.C.R. App. P. 10(b)(3). Because defendant again moved
unsuccessfully for dismissal of the charges at the close of all the
evidence, however, we will address this issue.
While defendant speculates in his brief as to how the victim's
injuries might have occurred and as to other possible perpetrators,
evidence is sufficient to withstand a motion to dismiss when itgives “rise to a reasonable inference of defendant's guilt based on
the circumstances.” State v. Styles, 93 N.C. App. 596, 603, 379
S.E.2d 255, 260 (1989). Once sufficient evidence is adduced at
trial, it becomes a question for the jury. Id. “This test applies
when the evidence is circumstantial, direct, or both.” Id.
The victim's mother and grandmother both testified that the
victim was behaving normally on 27 August 2000. Defendant was
alone with the victim on 28 August 2000 from approximately 6:45
a.m. until noon. Between 10:45 and 11:00 that morning, defendant
left a voice message for Ms. Jones that the victim had fallen and
busted his lip. She called 911 after observing the victim's
condition upon her arrival at the apartment. EMS personnel arrived
ten minutes later and transported the victim to the emergency room.
Dr. St. Claire testified the victim had suffered a very severe head
injury which was consistent with very violent shaking with extreme
rotational forces with the victim's head for ten to twenty seconds.
She opined that the victim would have “become symptomatic probably
within minutes or very shortly within half an hour to an hour”
after being injured. This evidence, when viewed in the light most
favorable to the State, was sufficient to withstand defendant's
motion to dismiss. This assignment of error is overruled.
Defendant next contends the trial court did not properly
balance the factors in aggravation and mitigation and erred by
sentencing him at the top of the aggravated range of punishment.
He argues “[t]he trial court seems to have based his decision to
order a heavy sentence on having interpreted defendant's testimonyas an excuse or explanation for how [the victim] was so severely
injured” and “is punishing defendant for exercising his
constitutional right to defend himself of criminal charges.” We
disagree.
Defendant does not challenge the trial court's actual findings
as to the factors in aggravation and mitigation, but rather its
weighing of those factors. However, the trial court's weighing of
those factors is discretionary. See State v. Wampler, 145 N.C.
App. 127, 133, 549 S.E.2d 563, 568 (2001). “The balance struck by
the sentencing judge in weighing the factors will not be disturbed
by an appellate court unless it is 'manifestly unsupported by
reason,' or 'so arbitrary that it could not have been the result of
a reasoned decision.'” State v. Hill, 105 N.C. App. 489, 498, 414
S.E.2d 73, 79 (1992) (citations omitted). From the record before
this Court, we find no abuse of discretion by the trial court in
sentencing defendant. Accordingly, we find no error.
No error.
Chief Judge EAGLES and Judge MCCULLOUGH concur.
Report per Rule 30(e).
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