Court Opinion

ID: 9596489
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-22 00:50:23.165826+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T09:20:19.710301
License: Public Domain

Justice MARTIN
dissenting.
For the reasons stated in my concurring and dissenting opinion in State v. Allen, -N.C. -, -S.E.2d- (July 1, 2005) (No. 485PA04), I disagree with the majority’s conclusion that Blakely errors are categorically excepted from harmless-error review. Indeed, the present case provides a perfect illustration of the majority’s well-intentioned, but ultimately misguided, approach to appellate review of Blakely errors. Applying the harmless-error standard for federal constitutional errors to the facts presented, as compelled by the United States Supreme Court’s decision in Neder v. United States, 527 U.S. 1, 144 L. Ed. 2d 35 (1999), it is manifest that the Blakely violation in the instant case was harmless beyond a reasonable doubt.
Defendant, whose reckless driving resulted in the deaths of two innocent people, was convicted of two counts of involuntary manslaughter and one count of driving while impaired. The trial court elevated defendant’s sentence for the two manslaughter convictions based on its finding of (1) the statutory aggravating factor, “[t]he defendant knowingly created a great risk of death to more than one person by means of a weapon or device which would normally be hazardous to the lives of more than one person,” N.C.G.S. § 15A-1340.16(d)(8) (2001), and (2) a non-statutory aggravating *608factor, “in the course of conduct, the defendant killed another [person].” Defendant’s sentence for driving while impaired was elevated based on the trial court’s finding of (1) the grossly aggravating factor, defendant “caused, by [his] impaired driving at the time of the current offense, serious injury to another person,” and (2) a non-statutory aggravating factor, “defendant used a motor vehicle in the commission of a felony that led to the death of two people.”
I agree that the trial court’s failure to submit the challenged aggravating factors to the jury violated defendant’s Sixth Amendment right to a jury trial as articulated in Blakely v. Washington, — U.S. -, -, 159 L. Ed. 2d 403, 415 (2004). It is difficult to imagine, however, a clearer example of a non-prejudicial trial error. Unlike the situation presented in State v. Allen, the evidence presented in support of all four aggravating factors in the instant case was both “uncontroverted” and “overwhelming,” such that there can be no reasonable doubt that a rational jury would have found these factors had the Blakely error not occurred. Neder, 527 U.S. at 16-19, 144 L. Ed. 2d at 52-53.
The uncontroverted evidence presented by the state may be summarized as follows: On the day of the fatal collision, defendant was driving a Camaro sports car on Highway 11 in Pitt County, North Carolina. Several witnesses observed defendant weaving in and out of heavy rush hour traffic at speeds estimated between sixty and eighty miles per hour. As he passed through a traffic light, defendant cut in front of another vehicle and lost control of the Camaro. Defendant skidded across a median, hit a pole, and collided head-on with an automobile traveling in the opposite direction. Defendant struck the oncoming vehicle with such force that it flipped over and landed on its roof, instantly killing the driver, Lynwood Thomas, and his twenty-year-old son, Donald Thomas.
Jeffrey Maye, a member of the EMS unit that arrived on the scene shortly after the collision, testified that he noticed an odor of alcohol in the Camaro as he helped extract defendant from the vehicle. Officer M.L. Montayne of the Greenville Police Department, one of the first responders at the scene, also testified that he detected an odor of alcohol inside the Camaro and, later, on defendant’s breath. Based on the odor of alcohol he detected in defendant’s vehicle and on defendant’s breath, in addition to the severity of the collision and the accounts of four witnesses he interviewed at the scene, Officer Montayne formed the opinion that defendant was appreciably *609impaired as a result of alcohol consumption and charged defendant with driving while impaired. An analysis of defendant’s blood conducted by the State Bureau of Investigation revealed that defendant had a blood alcohol concentration (BAC) of 0.10 over two hours after his arrest. A retrograde extrapolation of the same blood test results further indicated that defendant’s BAC was 0.13 at the time of the fatal collision. In addition, a drug screen revealed the presence of THC, an active chemical compound found in marijuana, in defendant’s blood.
In light of this uncontested and overwhelming evidence involving the confluence of excessive speed, reckless driving, and abuse of alcohol and illegal drugs, there can be no reasonable doubt that had the Blakely error not occurred, a rational jury would have found all four of the aggravating factors submitted by the prosecution. As to the statutory (d)(8) aggravator, defendant’s reckless, drunken driving manifestly “created a great risk of death to more than one person by means of a weapon or device which would normally be hazardous to the lives of more than one person.” N.C.G.S. § 15A-1340.16(d)(8). Moreover, because a reasonable person would have known that such wanton disregard for the safety of others poses a “great risk of death to more than one person,” defendant created that risk “knowingly” for purposes of the aggravating factor. See State v. Carver, 319 N.C. 665, 667, 356 S.E.2d 349, 351 (1987) (stating that “[a]ny reasonable person should know” that firing a gun into a crowd of people creates a great risk of death for two or more people and concluding that “the defendant created this risk knowingly”).
As for the remaining aggravating factors — that defendant (1) “in the course of conduct . . . killed another [person],” (2) “caused, by [his] impaired driving at the time of the current offense, serious injury to another person,” and (3) “used a motor vehicle in the commission of a felony that led to the death of two people,” the deaths of Lynwood and Donald Thomas, along with defendant’s two manslaughter convictions, provide tragic and indisputable proof.
Oliver Wendell Holmes famously stated that “[t]he life of the law has not been logic: it has been experience.” Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., The Common Law 1 (1923). In Neder, when considering whether the trial court’s “failure to instruct on an element of the crime” was a structural defect not amenable to harmless-error analysis, the United States Supreme Court cited Holmes’ aphorism, stating that “if the life of the law has not been logic but experience, *610we axe entitled to stand back and see what would be accomplished” by such a holding. 527 U.S. at 15, 144 L. Ed. 2d at 50-51 (citation omitted). Not surprisingly, the Court concluded that the practical results of “send[ing] the case back for retrial,” despite uncontroverted and overwhelming evidence of the defendant’s guilt, were unacceptable. Id. at 15, 144 L. Ed. 2d at 51.
Upon application of Holmes’ common sense principle to the analogous issue presented here, the emptiness of the majority’s formalism becomes apparent. Defendant engaged in criminally reckless conduct that resulted in the deaths of two innocent motorists. He was represented by competent legal counsel and convicted by a jury of his peers of two counts of manslaughter and one count of driving while impaired. Although the trial court’s failure to submit the aggravating factors at issue for jury determination admittedly violated the subsequently enunciated principles of Blakely v. Washington, the evidence in support of those factors was uncontroverted and overwhelming. It is simply inconceivable that a rational jury would fail to find those aggravating factors beyond a reasonable doubt.
If the life of the law has been experience, not logic, this Court is entitled to step back to see what will be accomplished by the disposition of the instant case. The Court today affirms the vacation of defendant’s sentence because of an error that caused defendant no actual prejudice and remands for a new sentencing hearing whose outcome is preordained. Following this decision, the case will again be docketed in the Pitt County Superior Court, where prospective jurors will be summoned, voir dire will be conducted, and a panel of twelve jurors will be installed, instructed, and asked to deliberate— all to reconfirm a trial judge’s factual determinations that (1) a criminal defendant who drove a car erratically and at high speeds during rush hour on a busy highway while intoxicated and under the influence of marijuana created a “great risk of death to more than one person,” and (2) that the two people he killed as a result of that conduct axe actually dead.
To vacate and xemand under such circumstances is contrary to precedent and common sense and tends to “justify the very criticism that spawned the harmless-error doctrine in the first place: ‘Reversal for error, regardless of its effect on the judgment, encourages litigants to abuse the judicial process and bestirs the public to ridicule it.’ ” Id. at 18, 144 L. Ed. 2d at 53 (quoting Roger J. Traynor, The Riddle of Harmless Error 50 (1970)).
*611I respectfully dissent.
Chief Justice LAKE and Justice NEWBY join in this dissenting opinion.