Opinion ID: 1271655
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 6

Heading: The Punishment Of Death Is Both Cruel And Futile.

Text: The severity of the death penalty is obvious. For that reason, it has been, and should be, imposed only for the most serious crimes and only when the defendant's guilt of such an offense has been established beyond reasonable doubt. The amicus curiae contends that to inflict the death penalty for any crime is futile because such penalty is not the most effective means for obtaining the goals of criminal punishment which it says are: (1) Retribution, (2) moral reenforcement or reprobation, (3) isolation of the offender, (4) reformation and rehabilitation of the offender, and (5) deterrence. Like Mr. Justice Stewart, in his opinion in Furman v. Georgia, supra, 408 U.S. at p. 308, 92 S.Ct. at p. 2761, we cannot agree that retribution is a constitutionally impermissible ingredient in the imposition of punishment. The reasonable certainty, or even likelihood of a punishment commensurate with the offense, imposed by the State, is more likely to deter private effort by the family and friends of the victim to balance the account, than is a policy of correction designed to release the offender in society as soon as possible. The amicus curiae acknowledges that moral reenforcement or reprobation doubtless requires that the most serious crimes be punished most seriously. If so, the death penalty is not futile so far as the attainment of this goal is concerned. Isolation of the offender apparently means prevention of further crime by him. The death penalty is certainly not futile in the attainment of this objective. Reformation and rehabilitation of the offender is obviously cut off by his execution. The present defendant, however, is not a promising prospect for rehabilitation by human punishment of any sort. Before going to trial, he was committed to one of the State hospitals for the insane for the purpose of an examination into his sanity. He was returned for trial with the report, Without Psychosis (Not Insane). That evaluation of his mind is not challenged. It is not contended by the appellant or by the amicus curiae that this defendant is lacking in intelligence. Prior to the offenses with which we are now concerned, the defendant was convicted of the murders of two other persons by stabbing them. For these offenses he was imprisoned for a term of years. While serving that sentence, he was permitted to join a national civic society, the Junior Chamber of Commerce, and became the president of a chapter of this society organized within the prison. He was permitted to leave the prison so as to attend a State convention of this organization. He took advantage of this leniency and escaped. Two days later, within a space of less than three hours, he abducted and raped a girl of his own race, whom he had never seen before, and stabbed to death a complete stranger, a teenager sitting quietly in a parked car, for the sole purpose of stealing the automobile. He callously drove off with the dying boy and abandoned his body in a roadside ditch. When arrested four days thereafter by agents of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, he was carrying, concealed on his person, another deadly knife, and his only expression of regret was that he had not had an opportunity to kill the arresting officer. The evidence is not convincing that another term in prison would be more efficacious in rehabilitating this defendant. Whether the imposition of the death penalty in such a case will be futile in deterring others from like acts is, necessarily, a matter of opinion, upon which reasonable minds may and do differ. The steadily rising tide of crimes of the most serious nature, throughout the nation, has occurred in an era of unprecedented permissiveness in our society and of emphasis on sympathy for the accused rather than for his victim and those endangered by him. This is ample basis for reasonable men to conclude that some punishment of exceptionally vicious crimes, other than imprisonment coupled with carefully organized programs for rehabilitation designed to assure the prisoner that he has the sympathy of society, is necessary to bring about the turning of the tide. Through recent years, the efforts of North Carolina actually to impose capital punishment in the most flagrant instances of vicious crime have been blocked by mandates of the Supreme Court of the United States stemming from Furman v. Georgia, supra, United States v. Jackson, supra, and Pope v. United States, supra. We, therefore, do not have recent experience which would support or disprove the contention of the amicus curiae that the carrying out of the death sentence in this instance would be less effective than imprisonment as a means of deterring others from like acts. It is not, however, the function of this Court to determine the most efficacious punishment for the crimes of murder in the first degree and of rape. That is the function of the Legislature. Nothing in the Constitution of the United States requires that the Legislature prescribe the most efficacious punishment for crime, or even the one favored by enlightened sociologists. It is sufficient that reasonable men can believe that the punishment prescribed is reasonably adapted to the attainment of the goals of all criminal punishment. In our opinion, G.S. § 14-17 and G.S. § 14-21, as construed by us in State v. Waddell, supra, meet this constitutional standard. We, therefore, reject the contentions of the defendant and of the amicus curiae that the imposition of the death penalty for the crimes of first degree murder and rape is, per se, a violation of the Eighth and Fourteenth Amendments to the Constitution of the United States. No error.