Supreme Court of North Carolina· 10/26/2018

State v. Bass

Citations

819 S.E.2d 322
371 N.C. 535

Syllabus

Whether, at defendant's trial for attempted murder and assault with a deadly weapon, the trial court committed prejudicial error by (1) declining to give certain jury instructions requested by defendant regarding 'no duty to retreat,' (2) denying a defense request to admit testimony from witnesses describing the victim's previous aggressive, violent acts towards others, and (3) denying defendant's motion for a continuance.

How courts have described this case

Verbatim parenthetical descriptions written by other courts when citing this decision. Ranked by citation-network relevance.

announcing that when self-defense instruction omitted relevant language, “[d]efendant is entitled to a trial with complete and accurate jury instructions”
stating that character evidence is admissible to support or rebut an inference that the victim was the aggressor
distinguishing Watson on the basis that “Watson dealt only with opinion evidence—not evidence of specific acts” and thus “it sheds little light on the issue presented” in Bass
distinguishing Watson on the basis that “Watson dealt only with opinion evidence—not evidence of specific acts” and thus “it sheds little light on the issue presented” in Bass
“A criminal defendant may . . . introduce evidence of a victim’s pertinent character traits.”
“Whether character evidence is admissible under Rule 404(a)(2) is merely a threshold inquiry, separate from the determination of the method by which character may be proved . . . [under] Rule 405.”

Source: CourtListener parenthetical corpus (CC0).

Judges: Beasley

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14 cases in this archive cite this case.

Cites

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