Court Opinion

ID: 9580938
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-21 22:10:21.312719+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T13:36:36.666571
License: Public Domain

HiggiNS, J.,
concurring:
The defendant was indicted for murder in the first degree. When arraigned, he entered a plea of not guilty. The parties to the trial selected a jury satisfactory to both. After full hearing and determination, the jury returned a verdict of guilty as charged. The court followed the mandate of G.S. 14-17 and imposed a death sentence. This Court has held the trial was free from error. So long as the verdict stands, no other sentence or judgment is authorized.
In my opinion the rule announced by the Supreme Court in United States v. Jackson, 390 U.S. 570 is not applicable in this case. Jackson was indicted for kidnapping. For that offense the law empowered the judge to punish by imprisonment. The Kidnapping Act, however, provides that if the victim is not released unharmed, the jury may fix the punishment at death. The jury, but not the judge, has such power. By a plea of guilty, the kidnapper bypassed the jury and placed himself before the trial judge whose power to punish is limited to imprisonment. The Supreme Court held the fear of the death penalty was a chill on the constitutional right of the accused to plead not guilty and to demand a jury trial. The danger to be avoided is the risk that an innocent man may be caught in a mesh of circumstances which induces him to plead guilty rather than permit a jury with its power of life or death to pass on his case.
In the light of Jackson, the defendant Atkinson might have reason to complain if he had entered a plea of guilty under the provisions of G.S. 15-162.1 (now repealed) and submitted to a life sentence. He might allege that his rights to plead not guilty and to have a jury trial were abandoned because he feared the result incident to a jury verdict. These considerations, in no wise, interfered with Atkinson’s constitutional right to plead not guilty and to have a jury trial. He pled not guilty. He had a jury trial. His constitutional rights, in no particular, were denied him. So far as the assertion of these rights was concerned, G.S. 15-162.1 was not involved.
If the Court undertakes to determine that punishment for murder in the first degree shall be by imprisonment, it goes beyond the' au*323thority of G.S. 14-17 and I think beyond the function of proper appellate review, and invades the legislative field.
I concur in the Court’s opinion.