Four indicted on murder charges in Cary teen’s death

A Wake County grand jury has indicted three teens and a 20-year-old on first-degree murder charges in the death of Katherine “Katie” Ann Burdick-Crow after what police have said was a marijuana theft at Cary’s Walnut Street Park on June 26.

Police charged that Jourdan Chanquion Mack, Beth Marie Strange, Joshua Odell Simmons and Abijah James Masse went to the park intending to steal a quarter-ounce of marijuana that Burdick-Crow had agreed to sell them that Friday night.

Mack, 20, and Strange, 18, could face the death penalty or life without parole if convicted.

Simmons and Masse, both 17, could be eligible for parole after 25 years if convicted of felonly murder. In 2012, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that mandatory sentences of life without the possibility of parole is unconstitutional for those under the age of 18, said Jamie Markham, a legal expert with the UNC-Chapel Hill School of Government.

“A 20-year-old could get life in prison without the possibility of parole or potentially the death penalty,” Markham said Tuesday. “So could an 18-year-old.”

Mack graduated from Green Hope High School in 2014. Strange graduated from Panther Creek High School in June.

Masse and Simmons are rising seniors at Green Hope and Panther Creek high schools, respectively.

All live in Morrisville.

Police say the transaction was to take place in Walnut Street Park shortly after 9 p.m. on Friday, June 26.

In a search warrant, police said Burdick-Crow had “significant injuries to her head” after she was robbed of marijuana she was trying to sell the others.

Police say Burdick-Crow, a student at Green Hope High, jumped onto the side of a pickup truck in which Simmons and Masse were leaving after the robbery, according to investigators and witnesses who talked to police. Simmons, who was driving, punched her in the face to get her off the Ford F-150 truck, police said in search warrants in the case.

Burdick-Crow hit the pavement and died early the next day at WakeMed Raleigh hospital.

Wake District Attorney Freeman said her office opted to charge each of the defendants with murder because there was the “commission of a violent crime that led to the victim’s death,” in this case robbery.

The search warrant does not indicate any violence taking place when Burdick-Crow was robbed of the “quarter bag of weed,” as one lawyer involved with the case described it. But as Simmons drove off, he told investigators that he “punched Burdick-Crow in the face and head with a closed fist two (2) or three (3) times until she fell from the moving 2003 truck,” the warrant says.

Using violence to retain stolen property is the same under North Carolina law as using violence or intimidation to obtain it in the first place, said Jessica Smith, the W.R. Kenan, Jr. Distinguished Professor at the UNC-Chapel Hill School of Government.

“If I point a gun in someone’s face, that’s violence or intimidation,” Smith said. “But it’s also robbery if I am picking someone’s pocket and they notice me doing it, struggle with me and I punch them in the face. That counts for robbery.”

N.C. Central University Law Professor and defense attorney Irving Joyner of Durham agreed.

“Under North Carolina law, robbery is considered a continuous action until it ends,” he said. “The fact that the girl ran to the truck does not alter the fact that it is a robbery.”

Joyner said it’s not unusual for prosecutors to charge someone with murder when a death occurs during the commission of another felony, like a robbery.

“In fact, it’s used more often than not,” he said. “It relieves the prosecutor of having to establish intent to kill by anyone... The prosecutor has a bonus, in effect.”

Joyner thinks Freeman, the Wake district attorney, could have opted for “more appropriate charges.”

“It’s a very sad situation, all the way around,” Joyner said. “From the girl’s death to the charges the four young people are facing. I think she is using a sledgehammer when a belt would be more appropriate, like involuntary manslaughter.”

This story was originally published July 8, 2015 at 9:52 AM with the headline "Four indicted on murder charges in Cary teen’s death."