State v. Stokes

NEWBY, Justice.

Today we examine the scope of an appellate court’s review after it concludes that a defendant’s conviction was not supported by sufficient evidence. When confronted with such a situation, our longstanding practice has been to determine whether the evidence presented was sufficient to support a lesser included offense of the convicted crime. If so, we recognize the jury’s verdict as a verdict of guilty to the lesser included offense. The Court of Appeals therefore erred by refusing to consider whether defendant’s actions constituted the lesser included offense of attempted…