Court Opinion

ID: 9811819
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-31 22:29:46.201712+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T15:21:43.076795
License: Public Domain

Burches, J.,
concurring. I concur im the opinion of Justice MONTGOMERY, but feel that I ought to say something in justification of my concurrence.
The statute of 1893 divided murder into two degrees, and it has been discussed in so many cases that it would seem that the change made in the law of murder by that statute should be recognized, and pretty well understood by this time.
The rule prescribed by that statute entirely changed the law with regard to murder in the first degree. Before that statute, when the killing was admitted or shown to have been. *623with a deadly weapon, the law presumed murder, and the burden was then thrown upon the prisoner to show facts and circumstances in mitigation or excuse. This was a harsh rule, handed down to us as a part of the common law of England. Many of the States of the TJnion recognized the harshness of this law, and changed it by legislation years ago; but our Legislature made no change until 1893. It then divided murder into two degrees, first and second. The rule and the presumption with regard to the second degree is the same now that it was at common law. But with regard to murder in the first degree — after specifying several modes of killing, as by poisoning, etc. — it prescribed that any other killing, when done with deliberation and premeditation, shall be murder in the first degree. But the statute throws upon the State the burden of showing — proving—both deliberation and premeditation. Unless these rules are observed by the courts — if juries are allowed to find prisoners guilty of murder in the first degree without any evidence of deliberation and premeditation, the statute of 1893 is a nullity.
What, then, is the evidence in this case that the State insisted proved deliberation and premeditation on the part of the prisoner ? He was at home, in the peace of God and the State,but not of these “festive,harmless roisterers,” dressed in woman’s clothing, armed with whiskey,Roman candles,and pistols. These “festive” fellows were at the prisoner’s house, shooting into his yard, and guilty of an affray. State v. Huntley, 25 N. C., 418. And this view of the case was not presented to the jury.
But the State was asked to point out the evidence upon which it relied to prove deliberation and premeditation. The response to this inquiry was the fact that there had been a riot that evening between the negroes and the whites in Selma, and that there had been a riot in Wilmington last November, *624and the evidence that the prisoner said that he had read about the Wilmington riot until he could not sleep.
The prisoner is shown to live in Johnston County, near Selma, and that he had no connection with, the Wilmington riot; that he ivas in Selma the evening of the 26th, when the riot took place, but that he was not in it, and had nothing to do Avith it:
The Attorney-General, who contended that this evidence shoAved deliberation and premeditation, aves asked if he had read about the riot in Wilmington, and he said he had. He Avas then asked, suppose there had been a riot between the negroes and Avhites in Lexington on the evening of the 26th of December, and you had been in Lexington, at the time, but had nothing to do Avith, and that at ion or eleven o’clock that night throe men had come to your house in the condition and manner that these three men went to the house of the prisoner, and a fight had ensued between you and them, and one of them had been killed, as related by the State’s witnesses; do you think you ought to be convicted of murder in the first degree, because you were in Lexington that evening or because you had read about the Wilmington riot ? He answered that he thought not; and so,it seems to me,that every honest, right-thinking man. would say. And if it be no evidence of premeditation and deliberation against the Attorney-General, it should not be against the prisoner, unless Ave should have one rule of laAV for the trial of a negro and another for the trial of a white man. This we can not haA^e.
This affair and the riot at Wilmington, and the riot at Selma, are greatly to be regretted by all good men, and it is hoped that the like will not occur, again. Let these riots be among the things of the past. Let the dead bury their dead, but do not bring their ghosts into court to bury the living.