Court Opinion

ID: 9617523
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-22 04:56:54.218342+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T09:18:54.759018
License: Public Domain

Chief Justice EXUM
dissenting.
I differ from the majority with respect only to its conclusion that there was no reversible error in the trial court’s instruction on voluntary intoxication. The majority rightly concludes there was error in the instruction but, I think, wrongly concludes that the error was harmless because there was no evidentiary support for such an instruction.
As the majority recognizes, the test for determining whether a voluntary intoxication instruction should be given in a first degree murder prosecution is this: The instruction should not be given unless there is substantial evidence to support a conclusion that defendant was so intoxicated that he could not form, or was utterly incapable of forming, a deliberate and premeditated specific intent to kill. State v. Mash, 323 N.C. 339, 372 S.E. 2d 532 (1988). “Substantial evidence is such relevant evidence as a reasonable mind might accept as adequate to support a conclusion.” State v. Smith, 300 N.C. 71, 78-79, 265 S.E. 2d 164, 169 (1980). It is for the trial judge, in the first instance, to determine whether this test has been met and for the appellate court, finally, to decide whether the trial court made the correct determination.
The test is properly a stringent one in order to ensure that voluntary intoxication will be available to reduce a defendant’s culpability only in the most compelling cases. Nevertheless, I believe the evidence here meets the test. Indeed, in some ways, the evidence here epitomizes that kind of evidence which entitles a defendant to this instruction.
The majority itself correctly capsules defendant’s position at trial by saying, “Defendant’s version of the events was that he was suffering an alcoholic blackout or that Charles Barker had committed the crime.” One who is suffering from an “alcoholic blackout” at the time a crime is committed epitomizes a defend*144ant who is so intoxicated that he cannot form a deliberate and premeditated specific intent to kill.
There is considerable evidence which supports this, the defendant’s, version of the events. Much of it is recited in the majority opinion. It is the principal basis for the defense proffered in this case.
As the majority correctly states, the testimony of both Barker, the state’s principal witness, and defendant, an alcoholic, tends to show that the two consumed half a case of beer and a fifth of whiskey during the afternoon and evening of April 8, before they left Kentucky for North Carolina. (Defendant also testified that on the morning of April 8 he was “hung over,” having consumed an unspecified quantity of alcohol the night before.) During their trip to North Carolina, the two stopped twice to buy beer — one or two six-packs plus two quarts, according to Barker. (Defendant testified they purchased “a sackful of beer.”)
Defendant testified as follows: He and Barker checked into a motel in Newport, Tennessee, in the early morning hours of April 9. At the motel, the name and location of which defendant could not recall, the two “were drinking beer.” Defendant went to sleep. When he “came to” Barker had his arm over him. Defendant pushed Barker off the bed, and they fought with each other. Defendant “was somewhat sober then.” Defendant threatened to leave and hitchhike to Statesville, but instead he decided to “go down to the supermarket and get some more beer and to cool off.” He took the beer back to the motel room, “and I went in and we started to drink.” Defendant remembered “taking some pills.” Defendant and Barker continued to argue. “We would argue some. We would get drunk some. Then things would kind of cool down . . . .” Defendant said, “I started to just go on and hitchhike. I was drunk. We were drinking .... I barely remember leaving the motel room. I remember I was falling and I remember [Barker] had to help me some.” The next thing defendant recalled was the morning after the shooting “being in the front seat of the car and it was just getting daylight. I woke up. I was sick from . . . felt bad from drinking. ... I didn’t know where we was at.”
Defendant called as a witness Dr. Anthony Sciara, a forensic psychologist and Director of Psychological Services at Appalachian Hall. Dr. Sciara testified to his extensive experience treating *145alcoholics at Appalachian Hall and elsewhere. He testified at length regarding the various examinations and tests he administered to defendant, reports from other institutions about defendant which he considered, and interviews he conducted with defendant. He told the jury that in his opinion, based on all he had considered, defendant was an alcoholic and on the night of the crime “it is unlikely that [defendant] possessed the ability to form a particular intent to shoot the trooper.” It seems clear from all the testimony of Dr. Sciara that this inability was due to defendant’s consumption of alcohol during the period of time preceding the shooting and certain “psychological problems relating to alcoholism.” There is simply nothing else referred to in the record, or in Dr. Sciara’s testimony, that could have produced this inability to form a deliberate and premeditated intent to kill. This view of the basis for Dr. Sciara’s opinion is supported by Dr. Sciara’s further testimony on redirect examination that, “It is my opinion that it is very possible that [defendant] was suffering from a blackout [at the time of the killing] because of the amount of alcohol ingested during the previous twenty-four hours and the restriction of his memory and his behavior.”
I must conclude, therefore, that the evidence was sufficient to require the voluntary intoxication instruction. Such an instruction would not, of itself, entitle defendant to an acquittal; it goes merely to the degree of defendant’s culpability. Should the jury, because of this evidence and with proper instructions, have a reasonable doubt about whether defendant had a deliberate and premeditated specific intent to kill, it would not acquit him; it would find him guilty of second degree, rather than first degree, murder. As we said recently in Mash, 323 N.C. at 349-50, 372 S.E. 2d at 538-39:
Although there is little question that defendant committed a homicide, the case is relatively close on the degree of his culpability. The closeness is due to . . . the substantial evidence of defendant’s intoxication at the time he committed the crime .... The central issue for the jury . . . was whether defendant should be found guilty of first or second degree murder; and this issue hinged largely on how the jury would consider the evidence of defendant’s intoxication. For these reasons . . . had the error in the instructions on intox*146ication not been made, there is a reasonable possibility that a different result would have obtained at trial.
I must also conclude, therefore, that the error here in the voluntary intoxication instruction entitles this defendant, as it did the defendant in Mash, to a new trial.