A Charlotte man convicted of a hotly debated uptown murder will serve his full punishment after the state Supreme Court ruled Thursday that he was properly sentenced at his trial.

In March 2019, Rayquan Borum was convicted of second-degree murder and a weapons charge for the Sept. 21, 2016, killing of Justin Carr.

The fatal shooting occurred during a teeming uptown Charlotte protest following the police killing of Keith Lamont Scott the day before.

Prosecutors say Borum was aiming his gun at a line of police officers when a bullet from his gun struck Carr, a Charlotte truck driver attending his first ever demonstration. He died the next day.

Borum was arrested two days after the shooting. Despite eyewitnesses who later testified that they had seen Borum with a gun on the night of the shooting, some protesters persistently blamed police for Carr’s death and claimed Borum was a scapegoat.

After Borum’s conviction, Superior Court Judge Greg Hayes sentenced him to 276-334 months for the murder charge and 14 to 26 months for the weapons violation. Combining both charges, Borum faced a maximum of 30 years.

Borum appealed. The issue before the higher courts was not guilt or innocence but whether Borum’s original sentencing had been proper.

Malice behind the crime

Under N.C. law, second-degree murder can be a class B1 or B2 felony, depending on the type of malice behind the crime.

Three types of malice were listed on the verdict sheet for Borum’s jurors. The top two choices justified the more severe B1 classification. The third, so-called “depraved heart malice,” distinguishes a B2 classification.

Hayes told the jurors that if they found Borum guilty of second-degree murder, they had to check one or more of the malice boxes.

They checked all three, and Hayes sentenced Borum under the B1 felony guidelines

However, a three-judge panel of the N.C. Court of Appeals unanimously ruled in November 2020 that Borum’s sentencing had been “ambiguous” since the jury had not differentiated between the types of malice that distinguish the two classes of the same offense.

When in doubt, according to N.C. law and court precedent, the decision goes in favor of the defendant. The panel ordered the case returned to Mecklenburg County for a new sentencing under the B2 classification for Borum’s crime.

The N.C. Attorney General’s Office petitioned the Supreme Court to hear the case since the lower B2 designation would have cut a third off Borum’s murder sentence.

The Supreme Court ruling, authored by Associate Justice Anita Earls, formerly of Charlotte, overturned the appeals court decision and restored Borum’s original punishment of at least 24 years.

Earls wrote that there was nothing ambiguous about the jury’s intent concerning the crime Borum committed.

“Here, the jury was repeatedly instructed on the different forms of malice, and through a special verdict form, the jury explicitly found that all three forms of malice were present, including the types of malice that require a Class B1 felony sentence,” Earls wrote.

“There is no uncertainty regarding whether the jury’s verdict was based only on a single form of malice that requires a lower level of punishment (i.e., depraved-heart malice) or the two other forms that require a higher level of punishment.”

Borum is being held in Bertie Correctional Institution. The N.C. prison website says the 28-year-old is scheduled for release in 2045.