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

Heading: The Death Penalty Is Discretionary And Selective.

Text: As is true of any other criminal charge, a murder case or a rape case begins with someone notifying police officers that the offense has occurred. As the result of ensuing police investigation, the person charged is arrested and, in due time, the matter comes to the attention of the Solicitor. It is his duty to evaluate the information and determine whether to seek an indictment and, if so, for what offense. It is not the Solicitor's duty to seek the indictment or the conviction of the innocent, or to seek the conviction of a person, guilty of one crime, upon another and more serious charge of which he is not guilty. It is elementary and fundamental that a defendant is not to be convicted unless his guilt is established beyond a reasonable doubt. The decision of the Solicitor as to the offense for which he will seek an indictment from the grand jury and his decision as to whether to accept, with the permission of the court, a plea to a lesser charge, included within the offense specified in the indictment returned, are the results of an evaluation of the available evidence, including its credibility. The Solicitor's decision to charge a defendant with a crime, punishable by death if he is convicted, is a solemn one, properly reached only when, in the Solicitor's judgment, the evidence of guilt is clear and convincing. This is a human evaluation. There is often room for difference of opinion concerning it. To say, as does the brief of the amicus curiae, that because the Solicitor determines in many cases that he should seek a conviction of a lesser offense, his decisions to seek convictions on capital charges in other cases are freakish is a patent absurdity, unjust to the skilled and honorable attorneys who hold and have held the high office of Solicitor in this State. The purpose of vesting the power of judgment in an official is to enable him to make different decisions in different cases in the light of what he determines to be materially different factual situations. All governmental actions are based on this delegation of responsibility. The Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution of the United States does not require a state, in the enforcement of its criminal laws, so to hedge its prosecuting attorney about with guidelines that he becomes a mere automaton, acting on the impulse of a computer and treating all persons accused of criminal conduct exactly alike. From the foundation of the country to the present date, the discretion, now complained of by the amicus curiae, has been vested in prosecuting officers throughout the country. Without it, the greatest injustices would necessarily be inflicted upon innocent persons accused of crime. The suggestion by the amicus curiae that the death penalty is unconstitutional because in many cases, in which the prosecuting attorney seeks the death penalty, the jury acquits the defendant altogether or convicts him of a lesser, included offense, has, if possible, even less plausibility. Article I, § 24, of the Constitution of North Carolina requires a trial by jury in all such cases. The Sixth Amendment to the Constitution of the United States contains a like provision. Obviously, the possibility of different verdicts by different juries in different cases upon different evidence was not believed by the framers of these constitutional provisions to be a sound reason for denying a state the power to impose an otherwise lawful penalty upon one found guilty by the jury which tried him, he having had a fair trial in accordance with the applicable law. State v. Yoes and State v. Hale, supra, 271 N.C. at p. 631, 157 S.E.2d 386. It is quite true that Article III, § 5(6), of the Constitution of North Carolina gives to the Governor of this State the authority to commute a death sentence imposed upon any defendant, or to grant to such defendant an absolute pardon, and to refuse to disturb such sentence imposed upon a different defendant. Article II, § 2, of the Constitution of the United States confers a like power upon the President. So far as we have been able to determine, a like power is vested in the Governor, or some other official of the Executive Department, in each of our states. This power has existed and has been exercised repeatedly by the Governors of every state and by the President of the United States from the birth of our country. If its existence and frequent exercise makes the imposition of the death penalty unconstitutional per se, the nine Justices of the Supreme Court of the United States wasted a great deal of thought and much paper in Furman v. Georgia, supra. None of them so suggested in that case. We reject categorically the contention of the amicus curiae that the inevitable result of the North Carolina system of commutation is that an arbitrarily selected number of those convicted of like crimes will be put to death. The Governor exercises his judgment after investigation of the record of the trial and other circumstances, including subsequently discovered evidence. This Court reviews the rulings of the trial judge. The Governor reviews the decision of the jury, which we may not do. The exercise by one Governor of this judgment, resulting in the commutation of the sentence of one man convicted of murder or rape and the refusal to commute the sentence of another convicted of such crime, cannot be called freakish or arbitrary merely because another Governor might, theoretically, have reached opposite conclusions. The Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment makes no distinction between sentences to death and sentences to imprisonment. The Due Process Clause of that amendment protects liberty as well as life. The discretion in the Solicitor, in the jury and in the Governor, of which the amicus curiae complains, extends also to non-capital cases. If the existence of these discretionary powers makes the imposition of the death penalty unconstitutional, it would also make unconstitutional all prison terms, however long or short. Quite obviously, this is not the kind of discretion which the Supreme Court of the United States held impermissible in Furman v. Georgia, supra.