STATE OF NORTH CAROLINA v. MARK W. MARCOPLOS, NANCY KATHERINE
WOODS, PASCAL L. PITTS, LAURA WINBUSH VANDERBECK, JAMES EDWIN
WARREN, and RUTH C. ZALPH
NO. COA01-1518-2
Filed: 5 August 2003
Trespass–second-degree–constitutional
North Carolina’s second-degree trespass statute is constitutional as applied to defendants.
Appeal by defendants from judgments dated 9 August 2001 by
Judge J.B. Allen, Jr. in Superior Court, Wake County.
the Court of Appeals 17 September 2002.
Heard in
Affirmed by State v.
Marcoplos,154 N.C. App. 581, 572 S.E.2d 820 (2002).
Affirmed and
remanded, State v. Marcoplos, 357 N.C. 245, __ S.E.2d __ (June
13, 2003).
Panel reconvened to consider constitutional issues by
Order of Chief Judge, North Carolina Court of Appeals, dated 10
July 2003.
Attorney General Roy Cooper, by Assistant Attorney General
Harriet F. Worley, for the State.
Glenn, Mills & Fisher, P.A., by Stewart W. Fisher and George
Hausen, for defendant-appellants.
Per Curiam.
Following this Court’s affirmance of defendants’ convictions
of second degree trespass in State v. Marcoplos,154 N.C. App.
581, 572 S.E.2d 820 (2002), defendants appealed by right to the
Supreme Court of North Carolina based upon Judge Greene’s
dissent.
See N.C. Gen. Stat. § 7A-30(2) (2002).
That Court
affirmed our decision without opinion (Per Curiam).
However,
upon noting that “[d]efendants . . . sought review . . . of a
constitutional issue originally presented to but not addressed by
the Court of Appeals,”
our Supreme Court, “decline[d] to
consider this constitutional issue in the first instance” and
“remanded to [this Court] so that this [constitutional] issue may
be addressed.”
In essence, defendants contended before our
Supreme Court that the second degree trespassing statute, as
applied to defendants, violated the First Amendment of the United
States Constitution and Article 1 § 14 of the North Carolina
Constitution.
On remand, we can say it no better than the Supreme Court
did
in an analogous case over 20 years ago, State v. Felmet, 302
N.C. 173, 273 S.E.2d 708 (1981).
Like defendants in this case,
defendant in Felmet contended that North Carolina’s trespass
statute was unconstitutional.
Justice Huskins held that
“[d]efendant’s conduct was not protected under the First
Amendment to the United States Constitution . . . . [n]or were
defendant’s actions protected under Article I, section 14 of the
North Carolina Constitution . . . .”
Felmet, at 178, 273 S.E.2d
at 712.
Accordingly, for the reasons stated in State v. Felmet, 302
N.C. 173, 273 S.E.2d 708 (1981), we hold that these assignments
of error are without merit in law or fact.
Affirmed.
Panel consisting of:
WYNN, MARTIN, McGEE
