Court Opinion

ID: 9808746
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-31 20:49:35.418381+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T12:18:14.833193
License: Public Domain

Clare, J.
(dissenting): There is no exception raising any suggestion that the defendant acted in self-defense. The sole exception is that he did'not commit the assault “in a secret manner.” ' The Legislature, taking note of the fact that while an attempt to commit either of the other three capital offences was a felony, the attempt to murder was only a misdemeanor, punishable with fine and imprisment, enacted Oh. 32, Acts 1887, which provides that a malicious assault and battery with deadly weapon “by waylaying or otherwise, in a secret mannei*, with intent to kill”' should be a felony., This assault was made with a gun and with intent to kill, the prosecutor being shot in the leg. The witness is uncontradicted who testified that the defendant “fired his gun at him from ambush.” It would seem that this was “by waylaying, or otherwise, in a secret manner.” Indeed, it is the very mischief intended to be met by *1073the Act which proposed to lessen the number and danger of assaults with intent to kill by requiring the party under fear of heavier penalty to fight without concealment, openly and fairly. Furthermore, the Judge charged the jury that the defendant was guilty of a secret assault if “he was at the time concealed from the witness’s view (the witness being the man who was shot) so that the witness could not see him, nor see that the assault was about to be made,” although the “witness might have had reason to believe that the defendant was near and meant to assault him.” This would seem correct. If a man intending to travel a certain road is told that an enemy is lying in ambush for him, and such enemy does fire on him from ambush and wound him, it is none the less an assault in a secret manner because the victim was put on his guard and was looking out, gun in hand, to protect himself. The only difference m this case is that the witness was warned not by a friend, but by seeing the defendant enter the thicket along the intended path of the witness, with a gun in his hand. The witness got his gun and while going along the path “ was shot from ambush ” by defendant who was “concealed from view” so that witness could neither “see him nor that he was about to shoot.” The secret manner deprecated by the statute is’ just this mode of proceeding, and its secrecy is not taken away by the fact that, by warning of friends or the previous evidence of his eyes, the witness had reason to believe that a man was lying in ambush with intent to kill him. In State v. Jennings, 104 N. C., 774, it was held to be a secret assault when the prosecutor, standing in the public square of a town, was cut with a knife from behind by the defendant whom the prosecutor immediately grabbed. The Court held that it was not necessary that defendant should have endeavored to conceal his identity, but that the statute was based “on the idea of *1074fair play, ” and to make it “ doubly dangerous to assail a person on unequal terms” which in that case consisted in striking the witness with a knife before he was seen. This is approved in State v. Shade, 115 N. C., 757, and State v. Patton, Ibid, 753. In all three cases it is expressly stated that “ shooting by one lying in ambush” would be plenary proof of an assault in a secret manner and that less would be sufficient. In the present case, the testimony of the witness is uncontradicted that he was “ shot from ambush ” by a concealed person whom he could neither see nor see that he was about to shoot. The jury found from the evidence that the defendant was the man who, while thus concealed in ambush, shot the prosecutor.