Court Opinion

ID: 9856104
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-09-24 06:38:12.119664+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T09:26:02.536907
License: Public Domain

*8PARKER, J.,
dissenting. I do not agree with the majority opinion, which holds that when the solicitor for the state put the defendant on trial for a capital offense, it is error for him to state to a .prospective juror on the voir dire that the state is seeking a verdict of guilty of murder in the first degree without a recommendation by the jury of imprisonment for life, and, in my opinion, such a holding is not warranted by the language of the proviso appearing in G.S. 14-17.
G.S. 14-17 readis:
“Murder in the first and second degree defined; punishment. A murder which shall be perpetrated by means of poison, lying in wait, imprisonment, starving, torture, or by any other kind of willful, deliberate and .premeditated killing, or which shall be committed in the perpetration or attempt to perpetrate any arson, rape, robbery, burglary or other felony, shall be deemed to be murder in the first degree and shall be punished with death: Provided, if at the time of rendering its verdict in open court, the jury shall so recommend, the punishment shall be imprisonment for life in the State’s prison, and the court shall so instruct the jury. All other kinds of murder shall be deemed murder in the second degree, and shall be punished with imprisonment of not less than two nor more than thirty years in the State’s prison.”
The Court held in S. v. Denny, 249 N.C. 113, 105 S.E. 2d 446, that this proviso does not create a separate crime. Therefore, the three separate crimes of unlawful homicide in North Carolina are murder in the first degree, murder in the second degree, and manslaughter. G.S. 14-17 and G.S. 14-18.
This Court has held in many decisions that if a jury convicts a defendant of a capital offense, it has absolute discretion by virtue of the proviso in G.S. 14-17 to make a recommendation of life imprisonment, and if it does, the mandatory judgment of the court shall be imprisonment for life. S. v. McMillan, 233 N.C. 630, 65 S.E. 2d 212; S. v. Denny, supra, and the cases there cited. If the jury convicts of a capital offense, and makes no recommendation, G.S. 14-17 provides a mandatory death sentence. S. v. Bass, 249 N.C. 209, 105 S.E. 2d 645; S. v. Bunton, 247 N.C. 530, 101 S.E. 2d 454.
It is crystal clear from the language of G.S. 14-17 that the General Assembly has not abolished, and did not intend to abolish, capital punishment in North Carolina, and the Court has so held in the recent cases of Bass (1958) and Bunton (1957). It is perfectly plain to me that all the General Assembly did, and intended *9to do, by the enactment of this proviso was to give the jury, if it convicted of a capital offense, the absolute power to recommend imprisonment for' life, and if it did so recommend, to make the punishment imprisonment for life.
As the General Assembly has not abolished capital punishment in North Carolina, the solicitor, a constitutional officer representing the state, has the absolute right to place a person indicted by the grand jury for a capital offense on trial for his life, and to say to a prospective juror on the voir dire that the state is asking for the death penalty, and nothing in the language of the proviso appearing in G.S. 14-17 makes it improper or error for him to do so. I know of no decision in our reports that holds to the contrary. Does the majority opinion intimate .that in selecting the jurors in a capital case, it is error for the solicitor to ask a juror on the voir dire if he has conscientious scruples against capital punishment?
This Court in S. v. Oakes, 249 N.C. 282, 106 S.E. 2d 206, (decided at the Fall Term 1958), and in S. v. Pugh, 250 N.C. 278, (decided at the Spring Term 1959 with two Justices dissenting), held that it is error for the trial judge to state to the jury that the state contends that the jury should convict of the capital offense, and not recommend imprisonment for life. To keep the record accurate. I did not participate in the decision in the Oakes case, as I was absent from Court due to illness. It seems to me that the necessary inference to be drawn from .the Oakes and Pugh cases is that a majority of the Court is of opinion that by reason of the proviso in G.S. 14-17 it is error for the solicitor to argue to the jury that the state is asking for a verdict of guilty of the capital offense, and that the jury should not exercise its absolute right to recommend imprisonment for life, though it has not decided that exact question. In my judgment, the proviso in G.S. 14-17 does not warrant such an opinion.
Unquestionably counsel for a defendant on trial for a capital offense has the absolute right to argue to the jury that if it convicts of a capital offense, it should exercise its unqualified right to recommend imprisonment for life, and every trial judge knows that counsel for the defendant will so argue with all the eloquence and power he has. If it is error for the solicitor to state to a prospective juror that -the state is asking for the death penalty, and to argue to the jmy in reply to defendant counsel’s argument that the jury should convict of the capital offense, and not exercise its unqualified right to recommend imprisonment for life, capital punishment *10will be to a large extent, if not almost completely, abolished in North Carolina. The ‘Bass and Bunion cases were tried in the Superior Court prior to the decisions in the Oakes andi Pugh cases.
If a jury convicts a defendant of a crime and the trial judge has discretion as to the punishment, it is ordinarily no concern of the solicitor as to the punishment to be inflicted. But that is not the case here. If the jury convicts of a capital case and makes no recommendation, the mandatory sentence by virtue of G.S.- 14-17 is death,- and if the jury convicts of the capital offense and recommends imprisonment for life, the mandatory sentence by virtue of the same statute is life imprisonment. Under such circumstances the punishment is fixed by the General Assembly, and neither the judge nor the solicitor can change it.
S. v. Dockery, 238 N.C. 222, 77 S.E. 2d 664, is not in point. In that case counsel for the private prosecution argued to the jury: “There is no such thing as life imprisonment in North Carolina today.” Such an argument of matter dehors the record was properly held as error. To the same effect S. v. Little, 228 N.C. 417, 45 S.E. 2d 542; S. v. Hawley, 229 N.C. 167, 48 S.E. 2d 35.
If the General Assembly had intended by the proviso in G.S. 14-17 to prevent the solicitor from announcing to prospective jurors that the state would aslc for the death penalty, and from arguing to the jury that the state contends that the jury should convict of the capital offense and not exercise its unqualified right to recommend imprisonment for life, it would have said so in plain language in the proviso of G.S. 14-17. This it has not done.
If capital punishment is to be practically abolished in North Carolina, it should be done by the General Assembly, and not by this Court, by what I am thoroughly convinced is an erroneous interpretation of the meaning of the proviso in G.S. 14-17 in the instant case and in the Oakes and Pugh cases, cases decided within the past twelve months, and which go a long bow shot further than all of our other decisions in reference to this proviso.