Court Opinion

ID: 9811818
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-31 22:29:46.197698+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T15:21:43.069196
License: Public Domain

Clakk, J.,
dissenting. I can not concur that the prisoner has not had a fair trial. Three persons passing along the *620public road, on a Christmas frolic, fired off a Roman candle in his yard, and a pistol not far from bis house. Instead of mating allowance for the customary exhilaration of such occasions, ho came out of his house, armed with a butcher knife, and made a sudden and furious murderous assault, killed one man, and seriously, almost fatally, wounded another. The jury found that this was not done in self-defense, nor upon heat of blood upon provocation. Of tírese facts they were the sole judges. There was evidence tending to show that the mind of the prisoner, who was a negro, had been inflamed by reading about the race troubles at Wilmington, and by having seen some of his race maltreated by white men at Selma that same afternoon. The prisoner had stated that “he liad been reading about the Wilmington troubles, and thinking about, them till he could not sleep, and that when he saw men in disguise he thought they had come to kill him.” Tf, under that wrong impression, he took up' the butcher knife and came out to kill the white men, there was surely some evidence tending to show premeditation, and that it was not the result of sudden provocation. It was not self-defense, but murder. The jury, not the prisoner, were to judge of the reasonableness of the apprehension (State v. Harris, 46 N. C., 190), and his Honor committed no- error in telling them that if the ground of the prisoner’s apprehension, or his motive, was (as the prisoner himself had intimated), “prompted by the occurrences at Wilmington, and the rioting at Selma, this would be a circumstance from which the jury might infer! premeditation” on, his part. His admissions showed he had been thinking over these matters with much intensity of feeling. Whether that thinking resulted in excessive and mistaken fear, or in malice, ivas for tire jury, and if either motive caused the killing it was without legal cause on the part of the deceased, and was murder. The Attorney-General *621being a white man, it may be presumed, would not be so deeply impressed by occurrences not arousing feeling's of either fear or revenge in his race, but which the prisoner said had not allowed him to sleep*. The Judge at least was correct in telling the jury it was a circumstance from which the jury could infer premeditation, i. e., hilling on purpose, and not in self-defense or on sufficient provocation, and he told them no more. The fact that the prisoner came out of his house without any further excuse than that the deceased and his companions were passing along the road, in a boisterous manner, on a Christmas occasion, and fired oh a Boman candle into a tree in the prisoner’s yard (and the jury found that state of facts, if they believed the State’s evidence), might well be taken into consideration coupled with the evidence of his deep feeling- over the Wilmington and Selma riots. Ilia extraordinary and unjustifiable assault might well have been caused by such premeditation and a determination resulting therefrom, either to avenge his race, or prevent a repetition of such incidents towards himself. Neither the statute nor the decisions of this Court restrict murder in the first degree to that deliberation which is used when the killing is by lying in wait or by the administration of poison. In State v. Norwood, 115 N. C., 879, it is said that the jury may find premeditation, no matter “how soon after resolving to* do so,” the killing is done. This language is approved in State v. McCormac, 116 N. C., 1033, in which the Court holds that “attendant circumstances rather than .computation of the time intervening between the formation and execution of the purpose,” throw light upon the question of premeditation. In State v. Carrington, 117 N. C., 862, it is said: “It is immaterial how soon after resolving to kill the prisoner carried his purpose into execution.” These decisions are all under the construction placed by State v. Fuller, 114 N. C., 885, upon *622tbe Act of 1893, for tbe act itself contains nothing transferring to murder in tbe second degree tbe presumption of. malice raised theretofore by a killing with a deadly weapon. In tbe present case tbe Judge left tbe admitted brooding of the prisoner (“so be could not sleep”) over tbe Wilmington riot, together with bis sudden rushing out of tbe bouse and slaying with a butcher knife a harmless roisterer, or reveler (if that synonym is preferable), on a festive occasion, and tbe almost fatally wounding of another, as attendant circumstances, among others, from which tbe jury might decide whether there was premeditation. Deliberation and premeditation may be inferred from facts and circumstances. State v. Booker, 123 N. C., 713.
Whenever public opinion demands it, the Legislature can, and will, abolish capital punishment, but it should not be done by judicial construction. The prisoner has had a fair trial before Judge and jury. It is to the verdicts of juries that the people must look for protection of their lives and property. The jury is the sole judge of the facts, and their finding should be final, in the absence of error of law on the part of the Judge, and I can see no error that he has committed in this case.