Court Opinion

ID: 9811011
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-31 22:06:05.610839+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T13:40:23.747211
License: Public Domain

Seawell, J.
We find no merit in the exceptions based on demurrer to the evidence as not being sufficient to sustain a verdict of guilty of . murder in the first degree. The evidence, which, because of these motions, we have summarized at some length, is ample in that respect and needs no special comment.
Appellant’s more serious assignments of error relate to the instructions given to the jury.
One of these assignments of error challenges the correctness of the judge’s instruction on the necessity of proving guilt beyond reasonable doubt, contending that he assumed there was evidence tending to show that deceased came to her death at the hands of defendant, whereas the evidence, particularly that of the mortician, who testified that deceased’s veinous system had been broken down, was deficient on that point. But without this testimony, evidence that deceased was bodily active the moment before, and immediately after repeated shots from a rifle in the hands of defendant was found dead with a wound through her chest, subsequently found .to have been inflicted by a rifle bullet, is certainly sufficient to go to the jury as to the cause of death and its infliction by the defendant. Also, later in the charge the court made appropriate reference to the necessity of proving that the wound so inflicted was the cause of death. The charge must be considered contextually. S. v. Hunt, 223 N. C., 173, 25 S. E. (2d), 598; S. v. Utley, 223 N. C., 39, 25 S. E. (2d), 195; S. v. Hairston, 222 N. C., 455, 23 S. E. (2d), 885.
The appellant further contends that the instruction to the jury set out in the statement of the case under Exception No. 9 deprived him of the benefit of his plea (and evidence thereunder), that the killing was done in his necessary and lawful self-defense. In support of this he cites S. v. MeHaffey, 194 N. C., 28, 138 S. E., 337, in which the instruction given was held to have deprived the defendant of his right of self-defense. *283Upon comparison of tbe cited case with tbe instruction bere given, we are of opinion tbat tbe contention is not meritorious.
However, there is a further challenge to tbe instruction as not having again and immediately defined “deliberation,” although that had been adequately and accurately defined in a preceding instruction. Beyond the familiar rule that the charge must be interpreted contextually, we have direct approval of the challenged instruction in S. v. McClure, 166 N. C., 321, 327, 81 S. E., 458. The instructions are practically identical, and for convenience in a word by word comparison, we quote from S. v. McClure, supra:
“Deliberation means to think about, to revolve over in one’s mind; and if a person thinks about the performance of an act and determines in his mind to do that act, he had deliberated upon the act, gentlemen. Premeditation means to think beforehand, think over a matter beforehand; and where a person forms a purpose to kill another, and weighs this purpose in his mind long enough to form a fixed design to kill at a subsequent time, no matter how soon or how late, and pursuant to said fixed design kills said person, this would be a killing with premeditation and deliberation, and would be murder in the first degree. And the court charges you if you should find beyond a reasonable doubt, gentlemen, that prior to the time he killed the deceased he formed.the fixed purpose in his mind to kill him, and that pursuant to that purpose he did kill the deceased because of the purpose in his mind, and not because of any legal provocation that was given by the deceased, then the court charges you that the prisoner would be guilty of murder in the first degree, and it would be your duty to so find.”
We have carefully considered the exceptions taken to the trial and examined the record for error, and we see no reason that would justify us in interfering with the result of the trial. We find
No error.