State v. Birchfield

The defendants insist initially upon reversals on the ground that the action ought to have been involuntarily nonsuited as to all of them under the statute embodied in G.S. 15-173. Inasmuch as they have been convicted of the principal charge rather than of a lesser offense included in it, our present inquiry comes to this: Does the State’s evidence suffice to show that the defendants or any of them committed a felonious assault and battery with a deadly weapon with intent to kill within the purview of the statute codified as G.S. 14-32?

The State bottoms this prosecution on the theory that…