Court Opinion

ID: 9581292
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-21 22:13:22.749237+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T13:36:50.093595
License: Public Domain

*178Justice Billings
concurring.
Because of a long line of cases since this Court’s decision in State v. Surles, 230 N.C. 272, 52 S.E. 2d 880 (1949) and the failure of the General Assembly to amend or repeal N.C.G.S. § 14-3, I feel compelled to concur in the Court’s interpretation of the term “infamous crime” as used in N.C.G.S. § 14-3. However, for all of the reasons expressed by Justice Ervin in his dissenting opinion in Surles, I believe that the interpretation given to that term by the majority in Surles was contrary to the meaning of infamous crime at the time of the original enactment of the statute and that the common law definition was intended. At common law, infamous crimes constituted a fairly clearly-identified group of offenses.
As construed, however, the statute allows the Court to determine what general misdemeanors are to be treated as felonies based upon our perception of the degree of depravity involved in the commission of the offense. It seems to me that this makes it impossible for anyone to anticipate the scope of application of the statute. As the result of today’s decision, we know that solicitation to murder is an infamous crime but that solicitation to commit crime against nature may be “at the other end of the spectrum” 317 N.C. 164, 171, 345 S.E. 2d 365, 369, and not infamous. Apparently, anything in between is potentially covered by the statute.
Justice Martin notes in the Court’s opinion that the defendant has not made a challenge to the constitutionality of N.C.G.S. § 14-3, and, appropriately, the Court has not addressed that issue. I write separately not so much to suggest the unconstitutional vagueness of the statute as to suggest to the General Assembly that some legislative limitation on the scope of the statute as construed in Surles would seem appropriate.