A North Carolina appeals court has thrown out a woman’s involuntary manslaughter conviction in connection with the death of a teenager who fatally shot himself using an unsecured gun he handled while visiting her home.
The case centers on Kimberly Cable, of Marion, who was found guilty of felony involuntary manslaughter and two counts of misdemeanor failure to store a firearm to protect a minor in 2022. She was sentenced to three years of probation.
On July 27, 2018, Ms. Cable’s 16-year-old son invited his friend, also 16, to spend the night at his family home.
The prosecutors said that Ms. Cable, whose husband Roger Cable is a gunsmith, had an unloaded, holstered .44 revolver and a box of ammunition lying on top of an open gun safe in her bedroom.
At around 2 a.m., Ms. Cable’s son went into his mother’s bedroom where the couple was sleeping and retrieved the revolver and the box of ammunition, the prosecution said. After showing his friend the revolver, Ms. Cable’s son placed the revolver and the box of ammunition on top of a gun safe in his own bedroom.
Sometime later, the friend asked Ms. Cable’s son if he wanted to play Russian roulette, the court filings stated. The boy then took the revolver and a bullet, loaded the revolver, pointed it at his head, and pulled the trigger. He died instantly.
Police responded to the incident and discovered, among other things, 57 additional firearms throughout the Cable home.
On Sept. 18, 2018, Ms. Cable was charged with two counts of failure to store a firearm to protect a minor—one pertaining to the revolver and the other pertaining to the firearms throughout the home—and involuntary manslaughter. A trial court found her guilty of all counts. Roger Cable has also been charged in connection with the shooting.
Ms. Cable’s challenge of the first firearm storage conviction focused on whether her unloaded revolver was “in a condition that it can be discharged.”
The weapon was not stored in violation of the law, she argued, since “no amount of handling or even mishandling the [revolver] in the condition in which it was stored would have resulted in intentional or accidental discharge.”
In the June 18 ruling, three appellate judges unanimously sided with Ms. Cable, noting that they reached this conclusion following a review of the statute’s plain language, the use of similar language in other statutes, as well as the legislative history and the lawmakers’ intention.
“We hold a firearm is ‘in a condition that the firearm can be discharged’ when it is loaded,” Judge Jefferson Griffin wrote for the panel. He was joined by Judges Hunter Murphy and Michael Stading.
“Our holding resolves some ambiguity, but it remains unclear whether the statute contemplates the existence and/or use of any safety mechanisms, or whether a loaded firearm is ‘in a condition that the firearm can be discharged’ simply because it is loaded, or if it must be loaded with a bullet chambered, ready to fire,” he added.
The judges also tossed Ms. Cable’s second firearm storage conviction, saying that state prosecutors failed to show enough evidence that a minor gained access to any of the other 57 guns.
This means the last remaining involuntary manslaughter conviction must also be vacated, Judge Griffin said, because it was based on Ms. Cable’s conviction of the underlying misdemeanor—failure to store the revolver to protect a minor.
State prosecutors have opposed Ms. Cable’s argument that only a loaded gun satisfies the statutory text. In a brief filed last September, North Carolina Solicitor General Ryan Park called such a reading of the law “cramped and unnatural.”
“Although the revolver was unloaded, it was operable and in working condition on the evening in question, without any safety device preventing it from being able to fire,” Mr. Ryan told the court. “The revolver was placed on top of Defendant’s unlocked gun safe in her room—alongside a whole box of compatible ammunition.”
In the brief, Mr. Ryan further sought to prove the validity of Ms. Cable’s second firearm storage conviction, arguing that many of those 58 firearms in her home were “within easy access” of her son and his friend, including three on the living room couch and “a few” by the front door.
“From this volume of firearms in easily accessible locations alone, a reasonable factfinder could conclude that Defendant should have known that two teenage boys had easy access to firearms that night,” he wrote.
The state may appeal the decision to the North Carolina Supreme Court.
