Criminal Practice – Malicious Conduct by a Prisoner – Jail Video – Illustrative Evidence

Where a jail officer used a video of the incident in question to illustrate his testimony, and where the officer testified that the video fairly and accurately illustrated the events to which he was testifying, the state laid a sufficient foundation for admission of the video into evidence.

We find no error in defendant’s conviction of malicious conduct by a prisoner after he spit in an officer’s face.

Malicious conduct by a prisoner is a general intent crime. Because voluntary intoxication provides no defense to crimes of general intent, the trial court did not err, much less commit a fundamental error, when it did not instruct the jury on voluntary intoxication as a defense to malicious conduct by a prisoner.

Because the trial court committed no error by failing to instruct the jury on voluntary intoxication, defense counsel did not provide ineffective assistance by failing to request such an instruction.

State v. Curlee (Lawyers Weekly No. 012-014-20, 8 pp.) (Philip Berger, J.) Appealed from Davidson County Superior Court (Mark Klass, J.) Nolan Graves for the state; James Parish for defendant. N.C. App. Unpub.