State v. Cole

WEBB, Justice.

The defendant’s first assignment of error deals with the unrecorded bench conferences at which the court excused some of the jurors. We believe this assignment of error has merit. We held in State v. McCarver, 329 N.C. 259, 404 S.E.2d 821 (1991) and State v. Smith, 326 N.C. 792, 392 S.E.2d 362 (1990), that a defendant’s unwaivable right to be present at every stage of a capital trial made it error for a court to excuse a juror after an unrecorded conference at the bench at which neither the defendant nor his counsel was present.

In this case, it was not error for the court to…