Opinion ID: 1324457
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 7

Heading: Validity Of The Death Sentence

Text: The defendant does not, in his assignments of error or in his brief, question the validity of the judgment imposing the death sentence, as such. Nevertheless, his appeal is, itself, an exception to the judgment and thus brings before us for review all matters appearing on the face of the record proper, including the sufficiency of the verdict to support the imposition of the death sentence. 1 Strong, North Carolina Index 2d, Appeal and Error, § 26, and cases there cited. We, therefore, turn to the question of whether the verdict of guilty of murder in the first degree, without more, authorized the superior court to enter its judgment sentencing the defendant to death by asphyxiation. In State v. Peele, supra, we said that the decision of the Supreme Court of the United States in United States v. Jackson, 390 U.S. 570, 88 S.Ct. 1209, 20 L.Ed.2d 138, is not authority for holding the death penalty in North Carolina may not be imposed under any circumstances for the crime of rape. Bobbitt and Sharp, JJ., concurring in result, were of the opinion that the Peele case did not present for this Court's determination whether the Jackson case invalidates the death penalty under present North Carolina statutes. In State v. Spence (hearing on remand), 274 N.C. 536, 164 S.E.2d 593, we said, This Court has already held, in State v. Peele, supra, that United States v. Jackson,    is not authority for holding capital punishment is abolished altogether in North Carolina. Bobbitt and Sharp, JJ., dissented from so much of the decision in the Spence case as directed a new trial, their view being the death penalty provisions of our present statutes, when considered in the light of Jackson, are invalid. Whether or not the question of the effect of United States v. Jackson, supra, upon G.S. § 14-17 was before us in either State v. Peele, supra, or in State v. Spence, supra, it is before us in the present case. We reaffirm the views expressed upon this question in the majority opinions of this Court in State v. Peele, supra, and State v. Spence, supra. G.S. § 14-17 provides: Murder in the first and second degree defined; punishment. A murder which shall be perpetrated by means of poison, lying in wait, imprisonment, starving, torture, or by any other kind of willful, deliberate and premeditated killing, or which shall be committed in the perpetration or attempt to perpetrate any arson, rape, robbery, burglary or other felony, shall be deemed to be murder in the first degree and shall be punished with death: Provided, if at the time of rendering its verdict in open court, the jury shall so recommend, the punishment shall be imprisonment for life in the State's prison, and the court shall so instruct the jury.    The proviso was added by an amendment enacted in 1949, the remainder of the statute having been enacted in 1893. G.S. § 15-162.1 was enacted in 1953. Though subsequently repealed by Chapter 117 of the Session Laws of 1969, it was in effect at the time of the defendant's trial below. It provided that any person, charged in a bill of indictment with murder in the first degree, might, after arraignment, tender in writing, signed by himself and his counsel, a plea of guilty of such crime, and the State, with the approval of the court, might accept such plea or reject it, in which latter event the trial should proceed upon a plea of not guilty and the tender of the plea of guilty would have no legal significance. G.S. § 15-162.1 then provided: (b) In the event such plea is accepted, the tender and acceptance thereof shall have the effect of a jury verdict of guilty of the crime charged with recommendation by the jury in open court that the punishment shall be imprisonment for life in the State's prison; and thereupon, the court shall pronounce judgment that the defendant be imprisoned for life in the State's prison. It is to be noted that G.S. § 14-17, providing for the sentence to be imposed upon a verdict returned by the jury, and G.S. § 15-162.1, providing for the sentence to be imposed upon an accepted plea of guilty, were separate and distinct statutes, G.S. § 14-17 having been in full effect long before G.S. § 15-162.1 was enacted. It cannot, therefore, be doubted that they were always separate and distinct legislative provisions, that G.S. § 14-17 is capable of standing alone as it did for several years and that the validity of G.S. § 14-17 cannot be affected adversely by the invalidity, if any, of G.S. § 15-162.1. The repeal of G.S. § 15-162.1, leaving G.S. § 14-17 intact, shows the 1969 Legislature's intent for G.S. § 14-17 to stand alone. In United States v. Jackson, supra, the Supreme Court of the United States reversed a judgment of the District Court which had dismissed an indictment for violation of the Federal Kidnapping Act, 18 U.S.C. § 1201. That Act provided: Whoever knowingly transports in interstate    commerce, any person who has been unlawfully    kidnaped    and held for ransom    shall be punished (1) by death if the kidnaped person has not been liberated unharmed, and if the verdict of the jury shall so recommend, or (2) by imprisonment for any term of years or for life, if the death penalty is not imposed. As the Supreme Court of the United States observed in its opinion in the Jackson case, the Federal Kidnapping Act, as originally enacted by Congress in 1932, contained no provision for the infliction of capital punishment. An amendment, enacted in 1934, inserted the provision authorizing the death penalty to be imposed under specific circumstances, if the verdict of the jury shall so recommend. The decision of the Jackson case was that the amendment of 1934 was unconstitutional for the reason that it imposed an impermissible burden upon the exercise of the defendant's constitutional right to demand a jury trial. Prior to the adoption of the 1934 amendment, one accused of violating the Federal Kidnapping Act could exercise his constitutional right to demand a jury trial without risk of the death penalty if the jury found him guilty. Under the 1934 amendment, he could not. For this reason, the Court held the 1934 amendment authorizing the jury to fix the penalty at death was unconstitutional, not because the death penalty, per se, is unconstitutional but because the 1934 amendment discouraged the exercise of the defendant's constitutional right to a trial by jury. The Court then said that the original Federal Kidnapping Act, which contained no provision discouraging the exercise of the right to a jury trial, could and should stand as a separate, divisible statutory enactment apart from the 1934 amendment. Consequently, the Court struck from the act the 1934 amendment, leaving the act in its original form, and held the indictment valid. The legislative history of G.S. § 14-17 and G.S. § 15-162.1 bears no similarity whatever to the legislative history of the Federal Kidnapping Act. If there was anything in these two statutes which discouraged the defendant from demanding a jury trial, it was found in G.S. § 15-162.1, the later of the two separate and distinct statutes. The constitutionality of G.S. § 15-162.1, while in effect, is not presently before us and we express no opinion with reference to its then validity. If, however, that statute is subsequently held invalid upon the ground suggested in United States v. Jackson, supra, or otherwise, such decision will not and cannot affect the validity of G.S. § 14-17, a wholly separate, independent, previously existing and surviving statute. Thus, the decision in United States v. Jackson, supra, did not, at the time of the judgment in this case, and does not now forbid the courts of this State to impose the sentence of death pursuant to a verdict of the jury in accordance with G.S. § 14-17. United States v. Jackson, supra, arose on a motion to dismiss the indictment. The present case comes before us after the defendant has pleaded to the indictment. In the Jackson case, it was not known how the defendant might wish to plead. In this case, the defendant pleaded not guilty and was tried by a jury. Whatever the effect of G.S. § 15-162.1 might have been upon other defendants charged with first degree murder, its being in the statute book at the time of this defendant's arraignment and trial did not discourage him from exercising his constitutional right to a trial by jury. There remains for decision the question of whether the imposition of the death penalty for first degree murder is unconstitutional per se. The Supreme Court of the United States has not so declared. We find nothing in the Constitution of the United States which leads us to such a conclusion. The imposition of the death penalty upon a conviction of murder is expressly authorized by Article XI, § 2, of the Constitution of North Carolina, adopted in 1868. G.S. § 14-17 was enacted pursuant to that constitutional provision. The history of this provision in our State Constitution is of major significance in the determination of the effect of the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution of the United States upon the authority of North Carolina to impose the death penalty. This provision reads as follows: Death punishment. The object of punishments being not only to satisfy justice, but also to reform the offender, and thus prevent crime, murder, arson, burglary, and rape, and these only, may be punishable with death, if the General Assembly shall so enact. Prior to the Constitution of 1868, there was no reference to the death penalty in the Constitution of North Carolina. The death penalty was, nevertheless, imposed in many cases in this State from the winning of our independence down to 1868, just as it was imposed during that period by the courts of the other states of the Union, under the provisions of statutes enacted in recognition of the power of the Legislature of a state to fix, in its discretion, a punishment for crime, unless forbidden to do so by a constitutional provision. It is a matter of well known history that the Constitution of 1868 was adopted by this State in order to meet conditions imposed by the Federal Congress upon the right of this State to send its lawful representatives to the Congress following the Civil War. See: Woodrow Wilson, History of the American People, Vol. V, pp. 37, 44, 46; Hamilton, Reconstruction In North Carolina, pp. 187, 215, 217, 288. It was adopted contemporaneously with the ratification of the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution of the United States. Obviously, the entire Constitution of North Carolina of 1868 was examined with care by the very Congress which proposed the Fourteenth Amendment to the states and was approved by that Congress. See Hamilton, op. cit., p. 288. In the light of this constitutional history, it is inconceivable that the Congress which submitted the Fourteenth Amendment, or the states which ratified it, regarded anything therein as prohibiting a state to impose the death penalty upon conviction of first degree murder. The widespread and frequent imposition of the death penalty by the courts of the several states in the one hundred years which have elapsed since the adoption of the Fourteenth Amendment, and the acquiescence therein by the Supreme Court of the United States in cases innumerable, clearly refute the suggestion that the Fourteenth Amendment prevents the State of North Carolina from sentencing this defendant to death pursuant to G.S. § 14-17. The constitutionality of a state statute cannot be determined by taking a Gallup poll of the opinion of the public with reference to the efficacy or the morality of a statute authorizing the imposition of the death penalty, even if it be assumed that the question can be framed so as to be understood by all of those reached by the takers of the straw vote. The power of a sovereign state of this Union to enact legislation is to be determined by the courts, not by public opinion polls or by writings in sociological journals or treatises. It is the duty of this Court to determine whether the State of North Carolina has that power in the light of the history of the constitutional provisions said to forbid its exercise and in the light of the long line of judicial interpretations of those constitutional provisions. Our determination is not to be guided by tabulations of answers to public opinion polls, said to have been received by the poll takers from unknown members of the public, not shown to have been advertent to either the language of such constitutional provisions, their history or their interpretation by the courts of this country. It is not for this Court, or any other court, to determine whether the provision imposing the death penalty for the commission of first degree murder is or is not a wise policy for a state concerned with the protection of its people from such acts. It is not for us, or any other court, to determine whether a statute providing for the death penalty is a more effective deterrent to first degree murder than some other penal provision would be. It is for the Legislature of North Carolina to make that decision. It has done so in the enactment of G.S. § 14-17 and, within recent days, has reaffirmed that policy determination by its rejection of a proposal to abolish the provision for the imposition of the death penalty. The sole question before us, in this connection, is whether there is any provision of the State or Federal Constitution which prevents the Legislature of North Carolina from adopting such policy and enacting a statute to carry it into effect. We find no such provision in either Constitution. Review Of The Record Ex Mero Motu It has long been the rule of this Court that in capital cases the Supreme Court will review the record and take cognizance of prejudicial error ex mero motu. See State v. Oakes, 249 N.C. 282, 106 S.E.2d 206. We have reviewed the entire record in this case, without limitation to the assignments of error made by the defendant. The defendant has been represented throughout this proceeding with diligence and skill by two able attorneys, experienced in the practice of criminal law in the courts of Wayne County and in this Court. They were appointed to represent him, without expense to him, several months prior to the calling of his case for trial. He has been given, free of expense to him, expert psychiatric examination to determine his mental competency to plead to the charge brought against him. Without expense to him, the record of his trial and the brief of his able counsel have been prepared and made available to this Court for review. We have carefully considered every part of that record and the earnest arguments of his counsel. The State of North Carolina has afforded him a fair trial in accordance with its established procedures applicable to all such cases. The evidence is ample to support the finding that the defendant, a sane man, with malice aforethought and with premeditation and deliberation, killed his four year old stepdaughter, Kathy Carr, that, after first grievously injuring her in a manner she could not understand, he took a shovel, placed it and the bleeding child, who had been taught to love and trust him, in his car, drove 18 miles to a lonely area, left the little child in the car, went into the woods, dug her grave, returned to the car and, taking her little hand in his, led her through the dark woods to the hole he had dug, there smothered her to death with his hands, threw her body into the hole and covered it in such a manner that only the defendant and God would know her resting place. The jury has, upon this evidence, under full and correct instructions of the trial judge as to the law, found him guilty of first degree murder and has concluded that he should be executed in the manner provided by law. The statute of this State authorized the jury to return such verdict and required the judge, thereupon, to enter the judgment contained in the record. We find no error of law in the trial which would justify us in granting the defendant a new trial or in vacating or modifying the judgment. No Error.