STATE OF NORTH CAROLINA
v. Robeson County
No. 02 CRS 10055
KRISTEN DANIELLE WIGGINS
Attorney General Roy Cooper, by Assistant Attorney General
John G. Barnwell, for the State.
Haral E. Carlin for defendant-appellant.
EAGLES, Chief Judge.
A jury found defendant guilty of attempted robbery with a
dangerous weapon, and the trial court sentenced her to sixty-one to
eighty-three months imprisonment. Defendant gave notice of appeal
in open court.
The State adduced evidence tending to show that Sheila Carey
was accosted by a dark-haired white female in the parking lot of a
Wal-Mart store in Lumberton, North Carolina, between 10:00 p.m. and
11:00 p.m. on 30 January 2002. As Carey was loading her purchases
into her white Oldsmobile, a vehicle pulled into the adjacent
parking space. The assailant, who was shorter and “heavier set”
than Carey, stepped out the car, demanded and grabbed Carey's
purse. When Carey resisted and yelled for help, she was hitmultiple times with an iron pipe or bar. Her assailant dragged
Carey and her purse toward the waiting car, sat down in the front
passenger's seat and told the driver to “take off.” The car
started forward briefly but stopped. When a bystander, Charlie
Branch, pulled Carey away from the car, the would-be robbers drove
off. Carey saw someone sitting in the back seat of the car but
could not see the driver. Although she described the lighting in
the parking lot as “pretty much clear[,]” she was unable to
identify her assailant. Branch, who described the robber as a
“bright-skinned” female, also saw a male in the car's back seat and
a second male in the driver's seat.
Michelle Hughes testified that she saw defendant sitting in
the front passenger's seat of a green Toyota Camry in the Wal-Mart
parking lot on the night of 30 January 2002. A male was in the
driver's seat. As Hughes got out of her van to go into the store,
she heard a voice calling for help. She turned around and saw that
defendant's green Camry had pulled beside a white or cream-colored
car. Defendant's car door was open and she was standing in the
parking lot, “hitting just as hard as she could hit” and trying to
steal a woman's purse. A man ran past Hughes to assist the victim.
When he intervened, the Camry drove away. Hughes called 911.
Hughes and defendant had lived in the same apartment complex for
almost one year at the time of the incident and she had seen
defendant driving the green Camry. Hughes acknowledged, however,
that she had seen other people driving defendant's Camry “plenty of
times.” Defendant testified that she spent the night of 30 January
2002 watching a movie in her apartment with her friends, Kenneth
Burke and Tiffany Phillips. At 7:00 p.m., Wesley Carroll came to
her residence with Chris Jacobs and Jerry Burney and asked to
borrow her car. Defendant allowed Carroll to use the car. She
remained at home, approximately twenty miles from the Lumberton
Wal-Mart. When she was arrested, defendant gave a statement to
police denying any knowledge of or involvement in the incident at
Wal-Mart and claiming that Carroll had borrowed her car on the
night in question.
Burke, Phillips, and Burney testified for the defense,
corroborating defendant's alibi. Both Burke and Phillips claimed
that they spent the night of 30 January 2002 with defendant in her
apartment watching a movie. They remained with defendant overnight
because their apartment had been sprayed for insects. Burney
averred that he, Carroll, and Jacobs borrowed defendant's car on
the night of 30 December 2002, drove to Clarkton and then “rode
around in Lumberton for awhile[.]” At some point, they picked up
a white, short, “larger sized” female with dark hair whom Burney
did not know. Burney moved to the back seat so that the female
could sit in the front next to Carroll. The group drove to the
Wal-Mart in Lumberton. Burney stated that defendant was not
present when Carey was assaulted in the parking lot.
On appeal, defendant raises three separate claims of
ineffective assistance of counsel, asserting that her trial counsel
(1) failed to conduct “a meaningful cross-examination” of Hughes,Officer Jackson, and Branch so as to undermine Hughes'
identification testimony and to corroborate the details of
defendant's alibi; (2) failed to conduct “a meaningful direct-
examination” of Burney regarding the identity of the white female
in the Camry who assaulted Carey and the details of the incident in
the Wal-Mart parking lot; and (3) failed to deliver “a meaningful
closing argument” to the jury, due to “the cumulative effect” of
his inadequate questioning of these witnesses. Because each of
these claims require an inquiry into facts lying outside the record
on appeal, they are inappropriate for our review here. See, State
v. Fair, 354 N.C. 131, 166, 557 S.E.2d 500, 524-25 (2001), cert.
denied, 535 U.S. 1114, 153 L. Ed. 2d 162 (2002); State v. Long, 354
N.C. 534, 539-40, 557 S.E.2d 89, 93 (2001). The materials before
this Court on direct appeal do not reveal the information possessed
by defense counsel which may have guided his questioning of these
witnesses; nor do they reveal what evidence would have been adduced
by the additional direct and cross-examinations proposed by
defendant. Accordingly, we dismiss defendant's claims of
ineffective assistance of counsel without prejudice to her right to
raise them in a motion for appropriate relief in the trial court.
State v. Clark, __ N.C. App. __, __, 583 S.E.2d 680, 687 (2003).
Dismissed.
Judges BRYANT and LEVINSON concur.
Report per Rule 30(e).
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