State v. Blue
| Decision Date | 21 May 1941 |
| Docket Number | 650. |
| Parties | STATE v. BLUE. |
| Court | North Carolina Supreme Court |
Criminal prosecution upon indictment charging defendant with murder of one Anderson Clark.
Plea Not guilty.
Evidence for the State in the trial below tends to show in brief these facts: Anderson Clark was shot in the head and killed about 8 o'clock on the night of November 30, 1940, while he was sitting before the fire talking with his wife's brother and another in a room in the home of Elpalear Locklear, an aunt of his wife and of defendant, with whom defendant resided. The shot was fired from outside the house through a window, where a pasteboard substituted for a pane had been removed, about eight feet from Clark. Clark, who resided with his father-in-law in "hollering distance" of the Locklear home, had come there with his brother-in-law, James Blue. Soon thereafter defendant came in and stood before the fire and for a few minutes talked with them and another sitting there, and then left the room. In ten, fifteen or twenty minutes thereafter the shot was fired. Immediately afterward defendant Berlin Blue, a sixteen year old Indian boy, who is the son of a deceased brother of Elpalear Locklear and a first cousin to wife of Anderson Clark, told his aunt, "I done it". When the officers came about an hour later he told them that he shot Anderson Clark because "he has been picking on me, cussing me and threatening killing me".
Elpalear Locklear testifying for the State, and speaking of defendant said: .
Dr. H M. Baker, testifying at length as witness for defendant, gave as his opinion that the defendant is of the mental capacity of the age of ten years, and that he is not fully aware of the consequence of his acts. The doctor stated: "I do not think he knows the consequences now *** and I do not think it has occurred to him that he has committed any wrong".
Defendant as witness for himself states that he had seen Anderson Clark that night at Fred Blue's, about a quarter of a mile from the Locklear home, and Clark had said "he was going to kill me"; that when he defendant returned home Clark was there; and that when he entered the room, "Anderson got up and grabbed me a-holt *** grabbed me with one hand, and he had one hand in his bosom, and said he was going to kill me *** I snatched away from him and went out in the other room *** I got the gun and then went out and shot him *** from out doors *** I was afraid of him, he told me two or three times he was going to kill me".
Verdict: "Guilty of the felony and murder as charged in the bill of indictment, in the first degree".
Judgment: Death by asphyxiation.
Defendant appeals to Supreme Court and assigns error.
John G. Proctor and F. D. Hackett, Jr., both of Lumberton, for Appellant.
Harry McMullan, Atty. Gen., and T. W. Bruton and G. B. Patton, Asst. Attys. Gen., for the State.
Upon the trial in Superior Court, the court, in charging the jury, read the provisions of the Statute, C.S. § 4200, that "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", and stated that where the killing is by any of the means defined in this statute the element of premeditation and deliberation is presumed. Then the court proceeded to give the following instructions which defendant assigns for error:
"Now, in this case, gentlemen, and I want you to listen at me carefully, in this case the defendant, the prisoner at the bar has gone upon the stand, and he has admitted that the deceased, Anderson Clark, was sitting in a room in a house which was his home; that two or three other people were in the room; that Anderson Clark was sitting in a rocking chair with both of his hands thrust in the jacket of his overalls; that at that particular time he was not doing anything at all in aggravation, or anything at all which would have caused the defendant to think that he was going to harm him; that he went out into the kitchen and took down a shot gun and inserted in that shot gun a cartridge, which he had bought a few days prior thereto; that he then went around the house to a window where one of the sash, where one of the lights had been knocked out and where a piece of card board had been substituted in the place of the light; that he removed that card board, placed his gun through the sash, and blew this man's brains out, killing him instantly". Exception No. 12.
"I charge you, gentlemen, upon that statement from the defendant, nothing else appearing, he is guilty of murder in the first degree, because the method of the killing admitted by him, comes directly and exactly within the purview of the statute which I have just read to you." Exception No. 13.
"Now there is no need of my referring to the testimony of other witnesses, because the defendant himself has admitted every single element which goes to make up the crime of murder in the first degree except one, and that is, gentlemen, he contends, and his only defense as argued to you through counsel, is that at the time of the killing he...
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