Court Opinion

ID: 9582786
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-21 22:31:20.614358+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T13:38:28.111507
License: Public Domain

EXUM, Justice,
dissenting.
I respectfully dissent from the majority’s view that the evidence in this case supports a verdict of guilty of murder in the first degree.
The evidence shows that both defendant and the deceased had been drinking heavily immediately prior to the shooting and were at a tavern of some sort apparently continuing to consume alcoholic beverages. With neither protagonist in full possession of his mental or physical faculties, the deceased began to annoy the defendant by approaching him several times in succession insisting that he knew the defendant. After pushing the deceased away three times defendant, upon the deceased’s fourth approach, hit him in the mouth. Words passed between them, and defendant shot the deceased four times with a .22 caliber pistol he had in his pocket and smiled upon observing his handiwork.
While the evidence is clearly sufficient to convict the defendant of an intentional killing with malice, ie., murder in the second degree, I find it wanting on the element of deliberation. Deliberation means that defendant formed the intent to kill after “reflection, a weighing of the consequences of the act in more or less calmness” or “from a fixed determination previously formed after weighing the matter.” State v. Exum, 138 N.C. 599, 617-18, 50 S.E. 283, 289 (1905). Deliberation has also been defined as forming the intent to kill “in a cool state of blood, in furtherance of a fixed design.” State v. Faust, 254 N.C. 101, 106, 118 S.E. 2d 769, 772 (1961). All the evidence shows here, without contradiction, that defendant did not kill in a cool state of blood in furtherance of any fixed design or after any reflection or weighing of the consequences of his act in calmness. The shooting itself was a sudden event and brought on by the actual provocation of the deceased himself.
The deceased’s acts do not constitute that “legal provocation” which would reduce murder in the second degree to manslaughter. They do, in this case, constitute that kind of actual provocation *313which negates the element of deliberation. Before 1893 there were no degrees of murder in North Carolina. In that year murder was divided into two degrees: first degree murder, punishable by death, consisted only of murder committed in the perpetration of another felony and murder which was premeditated and deliberated. All other murder was murder in the second degree. N.C. Public Laws 1893, Chapter 85; State v. Benton, 276 N.C. 641, 657, 174 S.E. 2d 793, 803, 804 (1970). Speaking of the elements of premeditation and, particularly, deliberation, this Court said in an early case construing the new statute, State v. Thomas, 118 N.C. 1113, 1122, 1124, 24 S.E. 431, 434, 435 (1896):
“The innate sense of justice implanted in the breast of every good man demanded that a distinction should be drawn between cases where there was actual though not legal provocation and those where a fixed purpose was shown ....
“If . .. there was a quarrel or argument, and in the heat of sudden passion, engendered by disagreeable language, which would not have been provocation sufficient to bring the offense within the definition of manslaughter, the crime ... was murder in the second degree.”
In the very first case construing the new murder statute, State v. Fuller, 114 N.C. 885, 902, 19 S.E. 797, 802 (1894), this Court said:
“The theory upon which this change has been made is that the law will always be executed more faithfully when it is in accord with an enlightened idea of justice. Public sentiment has revolted at the thought of placing on a level in the courts one who is provoked by insulting words (not deemed by the common law as any provocation whatever) to kill another with a deadly weapon, with him who waylays and shoots another in order to rob him of his money, or poisons him to gratify an old grudge.” (Emphasis supplied.)
The majority relies heavily on State v. Perry, 276 N.C. 339, 172 S.E. 2d 541 (1970). In Perry, however, there is absolutely no evidence of any provocative behavior on the part of the deceased prior to the shooting. He was riding in his own vehicle, minding his own business, when the vehicle in which the defendant was riding pulled up alongside and the defendant shot the deceased. Only the defendant, himself, was the provocateur. The only words spoken by the deceased, according to the evidence, were those admonishing the defendant to “behave” himself.
*314Neither do I believe that those circumstances delineated in State v. Van Landingham, 283 N.C. 589, 599, 197 S.E. 2d 539, 546 (1973), which may be considered on the question of deliberation, avail the state in this case. Here there was, all the evidence shows, actual provocation on the part of the deceased. Defendant’s conduct after the killing is consistent with his having killed with malice after being provoked. Apparently the four shots were fired in rapid succession, one of them missing the deceased, and three striking him while he was falling. There is no evidence of the dealing of lethal blows after the deceased was felled.
The killing in this case, in essence, is the unfortunate but not altogether uncommon result of what, except for the killing, would have been a minor imbroglio between two strangers thrown together by happenstance. To me these kinds of killings generally support prosecutions for second degree murder and no more. See, for example, State v. Richardson, 280 N.C. 178, 184 S.E. 2d 841 (1971); State v. Fields, 279 N.C. 460, 183 S.E. 2d 666 (1971); State v. White, 271 N.C. 391, 156 S.E. 2d 721 (1967); State v. McLawhorn, 270 N.C. 622, 155 S.E. 2d 198 (1967); State v. Moore, 236 N.C. 617, 73 S.E. 2d 467 (1952). In State v. Rhyne, 124 N.C. 847, 33 S.E. 128 (1899) the evidence tended to show that the defendant had been engaged in an argument with one of the deceased’s employees at the deceased’s cotton gin. Upon hearing of the argument, the deceased, owner of the gin, went to the defendant and inquired about the argument. The deceased said, “[A]re you the man that has been fussing here with Frank Parish?” When defendant made no answer the deceased asked him a second time. The deceased then put his left hand on the defendant’s right shoulder or arm and asked defendant to come into the light so that he, the deceased, could find out what the fuss was all about. Suddenly the defendant stabbed the deceased saying, “[HJands off.” The deceased jumped back three or four feet. This Court held that the evidence was insufficient to show premeditation and deliberation and reversed a jury verdict of guilty of murder in the first degree. To the same effect see State v. Bishop, 131 N.C. 733, 42 S.E. 836 (1902).
I vote to vacate the verdict of guilty of murder in the first degree and the judgment based thereon and to remand for entry of a verdict of guilty of murder in the second degree and the pronouncement of a new judgment on that verdict. See State v. Perry, 291 N.C. 586, 231 S.E. 2d 262 (1977).
Justice LAKE authorizes me to say that he joins in this dissent.