Court Opinion

ID: 9567500
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-21 19:54:36.631456+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T10:00:38.448362
License: Public Domain

Chief Justice Exum
dissenting as to sentence.
The majority concludes the sentencing hearing jury instructions on the unanimity requirement do not violate the federal constitution as interpreted in Mills v. Maryland, 486 U.S. ---, 100 *236L.Ed. 2d 384 (1988), on the basis of this Court’s decision on this issue in State v. McKoy, 323 N.C. 1, 372 S.E. 2d 12 (1988). For the reasons stated in my dissenting opinion in McKoy, I disagree with this conclusion and vote, because of this error in the instructions, to give defendant a new sentencing hearing.
When the majority in McKoy concluded that Mills had no application to North Carolina’s jury instructions on unanimity, it relied in part on the United States Supreme Court’s having denied certiorari in two North Carolina cases in which these instructions formed the principal basis for the defendant’s petition for the writ. The majority said:
The Supreme Court granted certiorari in Mills “[b]ecause of the importance of the issue in Maryland’s capital-punishment scheme.” Id. at —, 100 L.Ed. 2d at 393. The decision in Mills thus appears to be statute-specific. This conclusion is further supported by the Court’s treatment of three cases immediately after the decision in Mills. The Court denied certiorari in two cases from this state which raised the issue of whether North Carolina’s requirement of jury unanimity on the existence of mitigating circumstances is unconstitutional. See State v. Holden, 321 N.C. 125, 362 S.E. 2d 513 (1987), cert. denied, --- U.S. ---, 100 L.Ed. 2d 935 (1988); State v. Gardner, 311 N.C. 489, 319 S.E. 2d 591 (1983), cert. denied, --- U.S. ---, 100 L.Ed. 2d 934 (1988). However, in a Maryland case raising the same issue as in Mills, the Court granted certiorari, vacated the judgment, and remanded for further consideration in light of Mills. See Jones v. Maryland, 310 Md. 569, 530 A. 2d 743 (1987), cert. granted and judgment vacated, --- U.S. ---, 100 L.Ed. 2d 916 (1988). We recognize that “a denial of a petition for a writ of certiorari . . . carries with it no implication whatever regarding the Court’s views on the merits of a case which it has declined to review.” Maryland v. Baltimore Radio Show, 338 U.S. 912, 919, 94 L.Ed. 562, 566 (1950) (Frankfurter, J., opinion re: denial of certiorari); see also Singleton v. Commissioner of Internal Revenue, 439 U.S. 940, 944, 58 L.Ed. 2d 335, 336 (1978) (Stevens, J., opinion re: denial of certiorari). We do not suggest that the denial of certiorari in Holden and Gardner alone indicates that the Court decided that the defendants’ arguments in those cases were without merit. However, we view the Court’s action on Jones *237and its different treatment of Holden and Gardner, all in the immediate wake of Mills, as some indication that our capital-sentencing procedure differs sufficiently from Maryland’s that Mills does not control the question presented here.
McKoy, 323 N.C. at 43-44, 372 S.E. 2d at 35.
On 3 October 1988 the United States Supreme Court entered the following order in Oscar Lloyd v. North Carolina, No. 87-6833 (our State v. Lloyd, 321 N.C. 301, 374 S.E. 2d 316 (1988)):
The motion for leave to proceed in forma pauperis and the petition for a writ of certiorari are granted. The judgment is vacated and the case is remanded to the Supreme Court of North Carolina for further consideration in light of Mills v. Maryland, 486 U.S. --- (1988).
This order was granted on the basis of (1) Lloyd’s petition for writ of certiorari filed in April 1988 (before the decisions in Mills and McKoy), which relied solely on the assertion that North Carolina’s unanimity jury instructions for mitigating circumstances in capital cases violated Lloyd’s Eighth and Fourteenth Amendment rights and (2) a supplemental brief filed in September 1988 calling the Court’s attention to its decision in Mills and our decision in McKoy.
To the extent the McKoy majority relied for its conclusion on the United States Supreme Court’s denial of petitions for certiorari in other North Carolina cases involving the unanimity jury instruction issue, that conclusion has been substantially undercut by the United States Supreme Court’s action in Lloyd. The Lloyd order, considered with the filings upon which it rests, renders the conclusion reached in McKoy — that Mills has no application to North Carolina’s unanimity jury instructions — far more untenable than it otherwise was.
I concur in the result reached by the majority on the guilt phase issues.
Justice Frye joins in this dissenting opinion.