Episode 23: Jenkins, Jones, & Wright

[00:00:05.870] [SPEAKER_00] Under General Statute 14-34.10, unless covered under some other provision of law providing greater punishment, any person who discharges a firearm within any occupied enclosure with the intent to incite fear is guilty of a Class F felony. The Court of Appeals has now held that a defendant may violate the statute by firing from inside his own car, but he may not be sentenced if the same conduct also resulted in another more serious conviction. We'll be discussing that case, State v. Jenkins, today. I'm Joseph Hyde with the University of North Carolina School of Government. And I'm Jonathan Holbrook with the North Carolina Conference of DAs. And this is Turning States, a podcast for North Carolina prosecutors and others interested in the criminal justice system in North Carolina.
[00:00:58.436] [SPEAKER_01] Joe, let's start with that case about statutory construction. The Court of Appeals discussed this at great length, what the legislature meant by the word within. So tell us about State v. Jenkins.
[00:01:07.789] [SPEAKER_00] State v. Jenkins. This is a case out of Edgecombe County. The facts can be pretty succinctly stated. In June of 2020, the victim Rosa Harris was driving when defendant pulled up beside her in his vehicle and fired a gun into her car. The bullet shattered her window, entered her left arm, and lodged in her back. As a result of that conduct, defendant was indicted for a number of offenses. He was charged with attempted murder, assault with a deadly weapon with intent to kill, inflicting serious injury, discharging a weapon into occupied property, discharging a firearm within an occupied enclosure to incite fear, and possession of a firearm by a felon. The matter came on for trial by jury in February of 2024. During the charge conference, defendant indicated to the trial court his satisfaction with the proposed instructions, and then the instructions that were ultimately delivered to the jury included an instruction on self-defense. Defendant was convicted by the jury of all charges, judgment was entered, and the defendant appealed. And then on appeal before the Court of Appeals, defendant essentially raises four different issues. The first one, defendant argued that the trial court expressed an opinion on the evidence by instructing the jury on self-defense without any evidence to support that instruction. This is a little unusual because you have a situation where the defendant himself is contesting the self-defense instruction that was given at trial, saying that there should not have been a self-defense instruction at all because it wasn't supported by the evidence. The Court of Appeals looked at the discussion that the defendant had with the judge during the charge conference, found that defendant had agreed with the proposed instructions, and because he agreed with those instructions, he waived his right to review under the doctrine of invited error. The Court of Appeals moved on to the second issue, which was alleged discovery violations. Defendant argued that the state violated pretrial discovery rules by failing to disclose that Harris, that is the victim, would identify the defendant in open court and that the trial court erred by denying his motion to dismiss on that basis. The Court of Appeals noted that the state had provided discovery related to Harris's statement that she believed it was defendant who had shot her. The Court of Appeals noted that the trial court had found no discovery violation because defendant was on notice that he had been identified at the scene as the perpetrator. And the Court of Appeals concluded that the trial court did not abuse its discretion in finding compliance with discovery requirements.
[00:03:25.112] [SPEAKER_01] You know, Joe, this is sort of an interesting point that I've had a number of questions from prosecutors about. They're talking about that discovery statute, the 15A-903-A1C. It's the one that talks about, you know, basically if the prosecutor is meeting with a witness in a pretrial prep meeting and the witness is telling them, kind of going over their statement or going over what their testimony would be expected to be, the statute talks about how that statement from the witness does not have to be recorded or reduced to writing unless it contains something new or substantially different. But I note in this opinion When they quote from that statute, what they actually talk about here is saying that those kinds of statements from the witness don't have to be provided to the defense unless they contain something significantly new or different from the prior statement. And this is something that I've had to dig into a couple of times. We kind of got cases going different ways on that. And what I mean is that some cases out there would agree with this interpretation, State v. Smalls, State v. Blevins, State v. Zamora-Ramos. the idea that I don't have any obligation to write it down or turn it over to the defense, unless it's new or significantly different, and this was not. But there are some cases out there for prosecutors to be aware of, State v. Shannon, State v. Milligan, that seem to take this view of, even if it wasn't anything new or significantly different, If the prosecutor does write it down, then arguably it is now a statement in the file that does need to be turned over. And I don't have a great resolution to that. Like I said, I've seen cases kind of going different ways about it. But either way here, I would agree with you. The Court of Appeals seems to be saying even if there was a slightly more detailed information being provided to the prosecutor, it wasn't so new or different that they had a discovery obligation to turn it over.
[00:05:07.915] [SPEAKER_00] Well, to be clear, because that witness had provided a statement to the officer at the scene that she thought that it was defendant who had fired the gun based on some altercation between her grandson and the defendant. And then the state had proposed to allow that witness to identify the defendant in open court. And I think the defendant was trying to create some daylight between those two statements, right? Saying that the fact that the victim indicated she believed it was the defendant early was not exactly the same thing as specifically identifying the defendant in open court.
[00:05:37.665] [SPEAKER_01] Right, and I think what I'm reading here is that they're saying this is a little more detailed, a little more fleshed out about why you believed it was the defendant, but they're saying that kind of, I don't know, minor expansion of her statement wasn't so new or different that the state had a discovery obligation to turn it over.
[00:05:53.579] [SPEAKER_00] The Court of Appeals, at least with regard to that issue, concluded that there was no abuse of discretion in the trial court finding no violation of the pretrial discovery. The more interesting issue, the one that really occupies the bulk of the Court of Appeals opinion is this statutory interpretation of Section 14-34.10. Again, that statute says that any person who willfully discharges a firearm within any occupied motor vehicle with the intent to incite fear in another is guilty of a felony. The argument that the defendant, I think, was making was that that statute should apply when the defendant and the victim are within the same enclosure. So the Court of Appeals spent a considerable amount of time construing the term within and construing the term occupied. Just to give you a taste of the detail that they go into here, they say, first, firearm is logically closer to the post-positive modifier within than either the two other possible head nouns, person or another. The phrase could plausibly modify our firearm in addition to any person, but certainly not the subsequent in another that already post-positively modifies its own head noun, fear. Second, person forms a sintem with any occupied motor vehicle. This adjunct adverbial prepositional phrase syntactically answers the question of when, where, and how. It goes on like that for about four pages, ultimately to decide that because the defendant was within his own vehicle, that satisfied the state's burden of showing that there was the discharge of a weapon within an occupied enclosure.
[00:07:23.168] [SPEAKER_01] So, Joe, for the prosecutors that are listening, without getting into syntams and head nouns, can you kind of give them a sense of where it is ultimately that we're landing on
[00:07:30.257] [SPEAKER_00] this? Yeah, the upshot is this, and the Court of Appeals, I mean, helpfully kind of the holding appears just under subsection two. Thus, we hold that the only person who willfully discharges a firearm must be within a vehicle according to the plain self-contained meaning of of General Statute 14-34.10. It is sufficient if the defendant himself is the person who occupies the enclosure within which the firearm is discharged. It didn't matter that the victim was not within the same enclosure. The enclosure counted as occupied because the defendant was in it and because he discharged a firearm within the enclosure that he himself was also within. That was sufficient to show a violation of the statute of discharging a firearm within an enclosure with the intent to incite fear.
[00:08:11.870] [SPEAKER_01] And, you know, most of the time they are going to be within the same enclosure, right? I mean, if it's something that when it's being discharged to incite fear, it's going to be inside the apartment, inside the house. But this is this is not an isolated incident either where we've got somebody firing from a vehicle. And so I think that's an important one for prosecutors to know that as long as he's within that enclosure, evidently that's good enough.
[00:08:31.199] [SPEAKER_00] Right. So long as the defendant is within the enclosure, that's good enough. And it doesn't have to be an enclosure that is occupied by both the defendant and the victim at the same time. And then the final issue here was one that I blogged about recently. The same statute about discharging a firearm within an occupied enclosure also includes this provision, unless covered under some other provision of law providing greater punishment. That's a provision that appears in a lot of different assault statutes, and the North Carolina Supreme Court construed that provision in a case called Davis. They basically separated this. It's not a double jeopardy It's a double jeopardy-like provision, but the coverage of double jeopardy in this legislative intent expressing that provision is not the same. That is to say, you could have offenses arising from the same conduct where double jeopardy doesn't preclude multiple punishment, where this provision of the statute does preclude multiple punishment. And that's precisely what the Court of Appeals concluded here. Because the same conduct of firing a weapon from within his vehicle into another vehicle and injuring the victim gave rise to charges of attempted murder, advocacy, and discharging a weapon into occupied property, and some of those charges carry a greater sentence than the discharging a firearm within an occupied enclosure to incite fear, the Court of Appeals found that it was contrary to legislative intent for the trial court to sentence the defendant for that charge carrying the lesser sentence. The upshot is this goes back to the trial court to arrest judgment on the conviction for discharging a firearm within an occupied enclosure and to re-sentence the defendant for those other offenses.
[00:10:05.658] [SPEAKER_01] So then I think the next case that we had on for today is State v. Jones. This is a Court of Appeals case that we got on August 6th of this year, a case out of Hertford County. This arose back in September of 2016. The defendant and two of his friends named Askew and Cooper decided that they were going to rob a person named Uday Manik, who owned a local grocery store and a gas station. On September 23rd of 2016, the defendant and his cousin had a conversation. Cousin's name was Joy Lee. Lee worked at Mannix store and the defendant told Lee what they were contemplating. Lee told him that he did not think that was a good idea. He said he told him, you should never consider doing something like that where where someone in your family works. Lee, the cousin, then told Manick, the owner of the store, told him, you've got somebody watching you and put him sort of on alert to what these people were planning. This came to a head on the evening of September 29th of 2016. One of those other co-defendants asked you, went to Manick's store to buy gas. ended up coming back into the store, I think, three additional times that night. At around 10 or 11 o'clock that evening, Askew picks up the defendant. Askew drove Cooper and the defendant to an intersection that they knew Manick would be driving by. They were armed with a high-point .40 caliber pistol. The defendant and Cooper got out of the car. Askew drove away. A little bit later, Manick does, in fact, drive up. And at that point, one of the two begins shooting into Manick's car, and Cooper and the defendant then run off into the woods near the intersection without ever actually approaching Manick or taking anything from his car or his person. They sort of spend that night hiding out in a vacant house. Law enforcement is responding. They ultimately find the two men and identify them as the defendant and Cooper. Near the location where the agents who responded found the defendant and the Cooper, They did recover this black semi-automatic high point 40 caliber firearm. They found the gun just inside a wood line that was close to where Manick's vehicle was located. They also recovered some additional evidence like Cooper's cell phone. Bullets that were found at the scene were determined to have been fired from that same high point firearm. So ultimately based on all of this, the defendant was indicted on charges of first degree murder for killing the victim. robbery with a dangerous weapon, discharging a weapon into an occupied vehicle in operation, causing serious injury. This case came on for trial on January 30th of 2023. Both of the co-defendants testified pursuant to a plea agreement, Askew and Cooper, against the defendant, identifying him as being the shooter who had killed the victim in the case. February 2nd of 2023, the jury found the defendant guilty and he was sentenced to life in prison for the murder and gave notice of appeal. And he's raising a couple of issues now on appeal. The first of these dealing with a statement that was admitted into evidence ostensibly for corroboration. And the defendant is arguing that the trial court plainly erred by allowing some hearsay testimony to come in about the defendant's character for violence. And what we're specifically referring to is part of a written statement that Lee was asked to read out at trial saying that the defendant basically was a lowlife who had been arrested for fighting and was part of a group that robbed people. Those were arguably were not issues that were introduced by Lee's testimony, and so they were inadmissible as corroborative evidence of his statement. Now, again, he's just arguing plain error on appeal, right? So he has to satisfy this three-step test, you know, that a fundamental error occurred, had a probable impact on the outcome, and that must show that this error is an exceptional case warranting plain error review. So that's the standard that they're applying. But what they're looking at is essentially where defense counsel was cross-examining Lee and asking questions about her written statement about what the defendant had told her about the robbery. And in the course of that testimony, Lee said, I knew the people that he hung around, so I figured he was talking about him and I knew, I didn't know who he was talking about, okay, but I knew who he hung around. So making references to sort of the, I don't know, the character and the nature and the people that the defendant was with. But again, after that testimony, One of the testifying witnesses for the state, Agent Taylor, as corroboration, was asked to read out Lee's written statement to corroborate that testimony. And that's the statement that had this additional language about the defendant being a lowlife, hangs with lowlife, previously been arrested for fighting, hangs with some of the boys, robbing people in town. And so the question is, is that corroborating Lee's actual testimony or was this essentially going beyond that and introducing this additional testimony? The court here says it does not rise to the level of being plain error at least. They feel like her written statement was read aloud to show that the defendant was considering robbing Manick and that the defendant associated with people who had committed violent crimes and were involved in planning robberies. And so they say, Even presuming that the trial court erred by not intervening to strike that challenge testimony, the defendant couldn't show that absent the challenge portions of the statements, the jury almost certainly would have reached a different outcome. So it kind of lands on the
[00:15:16.907] [SPEAKER_00] prejudice problem, right? To say it wasn't sufficiently prejudicial, they don't really decide the question of whether it was error to admit it or not.
[00:15:22.537] [SPEAKER_01] That's right. I mean, you know, this is not totally beyond the pale, I would say, Joe. I mean, you know, I didn't read out the entirety of Lee's testimony, this stuff on cross-examination. But, for example, there's another answer that she gave where it said he said he knew somebody that was trying to get a quick lick and get out of town. And I said, when I said, what's that? He said, well, they said your boss got money. He cashed checks. So, I mean, there are statements coming out in the live testimony about this. Other people looking at robberies, I mean, there is some kind of a connection, but there's an argument to be made, you know, that getting into specifically the stuff about lowlifes and hanging with lowlifes and people arrested for fighting and robbery, maybe that is a little bit beyond. So whether that truly corroborated or not is not entirely clear, but at the very least, they're saying it's not going to be enough to rise to the level of being plain error in this case. So that was one issue, but then the other issue that really came out was this question about asking the witness about the truthfulness of their testimony, because the defendant is arguing that the trial court again prejudicially erred by allowing Cooper to answer the prosecutor's questions about whether the witness had testified truthfully. And what we're getting at is that at the end of Cooper's direct examination, the prosecutor asked this question. And so the information that you've testified to in court today Is that the truth? Is that what happened?
[00:16:40.736] [SPEAKER_00] And, Jonathan, let me pause you right there. Did that testimony, did that question draw an objection from the defendant?
[00:16:45.827] [SPEAKER_01] It did, and so the Court of Appeals here is saying that the trial court erred by overruling defense counsel's objection to the prosecutor's question. They sort of explain that it is improper, they say, for counsel to ask a witness who's already sworn an oath to tell the truth whether they have, in fact, spoken the truth during their testimony. That's not something we could do on direct examination. Now, they distinguish that where they say, however, once a defendant has questioned a witness's truthfulness on cross-examination, the defendant has opened the door and the witness has the right to respond. So on redirect examination, that might be something that we could get into, but It would be improper as sort of a capstone question on the direct examination of the witness of, and this is all the truth, right? Yes, I'm telling you the absolute truth. We can't do that. However, again, looking at the impact of that error, they say that Cooper's testimony was the most meaningful evidence that the defendant was the shooter since Cooper was the only other witness and there was no physical evidence to prove defendant pulled the trigger. But the trial court instructed the jury it could find the defendant guilty of any crime committed by the other in pursuance of a common purpose to commit a robbery. So in other words, the defendant could be guilty of this crime, whether he was or was not the actual person who pulled the trigger. And they point to this sort of overwhelming evidence that says he was there, he was a part of this. Whether he actually pulled the trigger or not would really be the only distinguishing characteristic, and that's not going to negate his guilt. And so he couldn't demonstrate that absent the error, there was some reasonable reasonable possibility that the jury would have reached a different verdict. So without showing prejudice, that was not an error that warranted reversal. And then they say the same thing on this allegation of what they call cumulative error. You know, adding all of it up together still didn't rise to the level of saying that there was plain error by admitting this arguably not really corroborating hearsay and not prejudicial error by allowing this other witness, Cooper, to testify about telling the truth at trial.
[00:18:43.446] [SPEAKER_00] And the takeaway being, if your witness has not been impeached, don't ask your witness, at least not in direct, are you telling the truth?
[00:18:50.394] [SPEAKER_01] That's right. That's right. And, you know, I think getting to this question of whether or not somebody's truthful testimony or not is sort of an interesting issue that comes up in the closing arguments of this next case that we've got, Joe.
[00:19:00.426] [SPEAKER_00] Yeah, the last one we've got on for today, State v. Wright. This is a case out of Columbus County. The facts of this case were back in June of 2020. Defendant was helping to remodel a TimeSaver service station in Brunswick, North Carolina, when outside of the store, he got into a verbal altercation with a man named Brandon Baldwin. They went back and forth. Brandon gets in his car and then gets out of his car. Keeps saying he doesn't have a gun, but he has some fight with defendant. Defendant went to his car and retrieved a pistol from inside his van, came back and shot Baldwin from behind multiple times. Baldwin falls down, but he gets up and he runs away around the store. Defendant chased Baldwin, caught him. They were having a tussle on the ground. He choked him, and then defendant apparently stabbed Baldwin with a large knife several times. Police responding to the scene found Baldwin, quote, engulfed in blood, and Baldwin died at the scene. As a result of that, defendant was charged with first-degree murder, assault with a deadly weapon with intent to kill, inflicting serious injury, and possession of a firearm by a felon. Matter came on for trial by jury on December 11, 2023. At trial, defendant testified that Baldwin had threatened to kill him and displayed the handle of a weapon on his hip. Defendant said that he was defending himself. The trial court dismissed the charge of assault with a deadly weapon with intent to kill, inflicting serious injury, and defendant was convicted of voluntary manslaughter and possession of a firearm by a felon. Judgment was entered and then defendant appealed. There were two issues raised before the Court of Appeals. The first one, defendant argued that the trial court erred by failing to instruct on the justification as a defense to possession of a firearm by a felon. And then the second had to do with an alleged error in the prosecutor's closing argument. But turning to that first question first, the North Carolina Supreme Court back in 2020 in a case called Mercer has recognized that in narrow and extraordinary circumstances, the defense of justification may be a defense to possession of a firearm by a felon. It's an affirmative defense and to be entitled to that instruction, the defendant has to show one, that the defendant was under an unlawful and present, imminent, and impending threat of death or serious bodily injury. Two, that the defendant did not negligently or recklessly place himself in a situation where he would be forced to engage in criminal conduct. Three, that the defendant had no reasonable legal alternative to violating the law. And four, that there was a direct causal relationship between the criminal action and the avoidance of the threatened harm. And then subsequent Court of Appeals cases have recognized evidence showing that a defendant possessed the firearm either prior to the altercation or after the threat had passed precludes an instruction on the defense of justification. The Court of Appeals found that both of those conditions were satisfied here, that even if the defendant legitimately felt like it was necessary to possess a firearm of his altercation with Baldwin, that the evidence pretty clearly showed that he had the firearm even before the altercation had started. He went and retrieved it from his van. and that he possessed the firearm after the threat had passed. He apparently walked away carrying both this large knife and the firearm. Court of Appeals said the evidence showed that the defendant had the pistol hours before the fight and continued to have it afterwards. It therefore concluded that the trial court did not err by denying his requested instruction on justification as a defense to possession of a firearm by a felon.
[00:22:14.422] [SPEAKER_01] Joe, am I remembering the facts from Mercer correctly? I mean, I think that was one where the defendant was maybe out on the front porch and was being threatened by a group of people. And I mean, literally just in the moment of being threatened, I believe grabs a firearm from somebody else, uses it and then throws it down and runs away.
[00:22:31.403] [SPEAKER_00] I
[00:22:31.442] [SPEAKER_01] mean, it's literally just in that tiny, narrow window of time when it was truly justified was the only time he ever possessed
[00:22:38.092] [SPEAKER_00] it. Yeah. And just to go back, I mean, the language from Mercer in narrow and extraordinary circumstances, this is not going to be the defense that applies in your usual run of the mill case. And maybe in a way limited to the kind of circumstances that you're describing, Jonathan, as occurred in Mercer, where he took the firearm from somebody else and then disposed of it as soon as he felt like the threat had passed. And then turning to that second issue, the closing argument, the defendant argued that the trial court erred by failing to intervene in the prosecutor's closing argument when the prosecutor characterized the defendant as a liar and a perjurer. The general rule is that the prosecutor may argue that the jury should not believe a witness, but he's not permitted to call him a liar. Here, the prosecutor said in closing, defendant elected to testify and tell you this story that it took him three years to come up with. He went on to say, defendant comes up with his story that he went and turned himself in. Defense would have you believe that the first thing he did was to turn himself in to the police. Not true. The Court of Appeals agreed with the defendant that the prosecutor's remarks were improper because it insinuated the defendant was a liar and injected the prosecutor's opinion as to the truth or falsity of defendant's testimony. However, the Court of Appeals also found that the remarks were not so grossly improper that they prejudiced defendant's right to a fair trial given the brevity of the remarks and the overwhelming evidence of defendant's guilt. Jonathan, I think you had pointed out when we had mentioned this case earlier that the rule here is not entirely easy to apply because it seems to indicate that the prosecutor is permitted to point out inconsistencies in the testimony and argue to the jury that the defendant might not be truthful, but he's not permitted to insinuate that he's lying or call him a liar. I think for prosecutors moving forward, that's a little bit of a difficult burden to meet because it cuts both ways. Suffice to say, in this case, the prosecutors calling the defendant's testimony a story and saying that this story was, quote, not true was enough for the Court of Appeals to conclude that that crossed the line into improper closing
[00:24:33.497] [SPEAKER_01] arguments. Joe, I agree with you. When I read this opinion, there was one quote in particular that sort of jumped out at me. This opinion is quoting back to a Supreme Court opinion called Huey, and they— quote this passage where they talk about how the prosecutor is allowed to suggest that the defendant had not told the truth, but he may not insinuate that the defendant lied. It just seems like a very fine line. But I mean, I think you're right that in this case, I mean, it isn't just saying that there's evidence to indicate this is not true. true it seems like there's maybe a little bit more than this you know you talked about that line and uh where he's talking about how the defendant elected to testify and tell you this story it took him three years to come up with maybe it's those kind of comments that are pushing it a little bit over I I guess you know we always try to say what's our takeaway for prosecutors I I know it is very difficult you know in the heat of the moment in the courtroom to be very carefully monitoring every word that's coming out of your mouth but I guess to the extent that we could rein that in and say something more along the lines of, ladies and gentlemen of the jury, you can't believe that testimony for these three reasons. You know, something along those lines might be a little bit safer. I
[00:25:43.640] [SPEAKER_00] just say the defendant has testified to this, and the rest of the evidence in the case will not bear that out, right? You're the finders of the fact here, and I suggest to you that the evidence doesn't support the defendant's testimony or something like that.
[00:25:54.893] [SPEAKER_01] Exactly. But I mean, I know some people listening to this are going to say, come on, Holbrook, is that compelling to a jury? You know, ladies and gentlemen, I would humbly submit to you. You know, there's got to be sort of some room for advocacy and passion and argument. And maybe my other takeaway would be. You know, if nothing else, let's take the language from Huey, right? I mean, maybe a prosecutor could say something along the lines of, ladies and gentlemen, I would suggest to you the defendant has not told the truth, and here's why. I mean, that's what we know we're allowed to do. And just staying away from some of those buzzwords like lied, liar, story.
[00:26:30.954] [SPEAKER_00] Just to follow that up with the other citation, they also quote a case called Stafy Miller. A prosecutor can argue to the jury that they should not believe a witness, but he should not call him a liar. So say we're arguing that you should not believe the defendant, but avoid the liar terminology.
[00:26:45.257] [SPEAKER_01] And I think the other part of it, Joe, you mentioned this, it's this idea of injecting your own personal opinion. So staying away from any of those comments about I think this is ridiculous. I know he's a liar. You know, just sort of trying to, to the extent we can, keeping the focus on the jury. You know you can't believe that, and here's the reasons why.
[00:27:01.685] [SPEAKER_00] Right, right. Well, that's all the time we've got for today. In this episode, we discuss Davey Jenkins construing the statute for discharging a firearm within an enclosure to incite fear. Statefee Jones, concluding that it was improper for the prosecutor to ask a witness if he was telling the truth, and Statefee Wright, finding no error in the trial court's refusal to deliver an instruction on justification as a defense to possession of a firearm by a felon. Turning States is a collaboration between the University of North Carolina School of Government and the North Carolina Conference of District Attorneys. We're coming to you from the recording studio at the School of Government in Chapel Hill. Special thanks to our producer, Paul Bonner, and to Gustav Holtz for our music. If you liked what you heard today, if you have questions, comments, concerns, if there's a topic you'd like for us to cover in a later episode, please contact us. My name is Joseph Hyde, and I can be reached at jhyde at sog.unc.edu. That's jhyde at sog.unc.edu.
[00:28:01.372] [SPEAKER_01] And I'm Jonathan Holbrook, and I can be reached at jonathan.p.holbrook at nccourts.org. That's j-o-n-a-t-h-a-n dot p dot h-o-l-b-r-o-o-k at n-c-c-o-u-r-t-s dot o-r-g. Thank you, John. That would be the showing for the state. Sounds good, Joe. Thanks. Hope it helped.