Court Opinion

ID: 9581542
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-21 22:15:57.077662+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T13:37:02.914259
License: Public Domain

*544PARKER, C.J.,
concurring:
Every man knows that in criminal law a judgment of a court of criminal jurisdiction formally declaring to the accused the legal consequences of his guilt must be based upon a conviction or upon a plea of guilty or a plea of nolo contendere to the charge against him. S. v. Thompson, 267 N.C. 653, 148 S.E. 2d 613; S. v. Griffin, 246 N.C. 680, 100 S.E. 2d 49; 21 Am. Jur. 2d Criminal Law § 525 (1965); 24 C.J.S. Criminal Law § 1556 (1961). The defendants, Spence and Williams, were indicted and tried in the Superior Court of Guilford County on charges of murder in the first degree. They were found guilty as charged with no recommendation that their sentences be imprisonment for life in the State’s Prison. On appeal this Court held that no error was committed in the trial, and the verdicts and judgments were upheld. 271 N.C. 23, 155 S.E. 2d 802.
According to the verdicts the North Carolina statute G.S. 14-17 provides for a mandatory sentence of death. There was no conviction of murder in the first degree with a recommendation by the jury for imprisonment for life in the State’s Prison. G.S. 14-17.
On appeal the Supreme Court of the United States remanded this case below with an order that the judgment in it should be vacated and the case is remanded for consideration in the light of Witherspoon v. Illinois, No. 1015, decided June 3, 1968. In the light of the Witherspoon decision, which in effect overruled the highest courts of 35 states in the Union, S. v. Childs, 269 N.C. 307, 152 S.E. 2d 453; Annot., 48 A.L.R. 2d 563; and the cases of Tuberville v. United States, 303 F. 2d 411, cert. den. 307 U.S. 946, 8 L. Ed. 2d 813, and United States v. Puff, 211 F. 2d 171, cert. den. 347 U.S. 963, 98 L. Ed. 1106, we have ordered a new trial because of alleged infirmity in the selection of the jury under the Witherspoon decision. In my opinion, the case cannot be remanded for new judgments of life imprisonment because there is no verdict and no plea to support life imprisonment.
Until recent years the infliction of the death penalty in a proper case by the State has not been questioned. In my judgment, the opinion of the Supreme Court of the United States in United States v. Jackson, 390 U.S. 750, 20 L. Ed. 2d 138, does not abolish the death penalty under the applicable North Carolina statutes. In the majority opinions in the Witherspoon case and the Jackson case, broad, comprehensive statements of law have been made which make it difficult to determine precisely and definitely what the majority opinions hold. This is illustrated by the divergent views expressed by members of the Court in the instant case. If a majority of the *545Supreme Court of the United States is determined to abolish the death penalty in this country by judicial decision and in defiance of the united wisdom of their predecessors on that Court since its inception until the last few years, in my opinion, they should come out and definitely and plainly say so instead of leaving the law in the state of uncertainty and confusion that, in my opinion, exists today. If the death penalty in a proper case is to be abolished in this country, in my opinion, it should be done by a vote of the people or by their duly elected representatives. I concur in the majority opinion in this case.