State v. Cephus, 77

• Decision Date: 24 February 1954
• Docket Number: No. 77,77
• Court: North Carolina Supreme Court
• Parties: STATE, v. CEPHUS.

Page 147

80 S.E.2d 147

239 N.C. 521

STATE, v. CEPHUS.

No. 77

Supreme Court of North Carolina.

Feb. 24, 1954

Harry McMullan, Atty. Gen., Ralph Moody, Asst. Atty. Gen., and Gerald F. White, Raleigh, of Staff for the State.

Weeks & Muse, Tarboro, for defendant, appellant.

BARNHILL, Chief Justice.

The court below in its charge instructed the jury in part as follows:

'The burden of proof as to the plea of self-defense is on the defendant to satisfy the jury, not beyond a reasonable doubt nor by the greater weight of the evidence, but simply to satisfy the jury that he was fighting in his own self-defense and used no more force than was reasonably necessary for his protection.'

This instruction must be held for error which entitles the defendant to a new trial.

It is true that in homicide cases when it is made to appear that defendant intentionally assaults another with a deadly weapon, inflicting a wound which proximately causes the death of the person assaulted, the law raises certain presumptions of fact which, nothing else appearing, require a verdict of murder in the second degree. And upon the admission or proof of such facts, the law casts upon the defendant the burden of proving facts and circumstances which will rebut the presumption of malice or which will excuse the homicide altogether on the grounds of self-defense, accident, or misadventure. But we need not now enter into a discussion of the philosophy underlying that rule for it has no application here.

In criminal prosecutions a defendant's plea of not guilty clothes him with a presumption of innocence which continues to the moment the State offers evidence sufficient to rebut the presumption and to show beyond a reasonable doubt that the defendant in fact committed the crime charged, or some lesser degree thereof. State v. Carver, 213 N.C. 150, 195 S.E. 349. Consequently the burden of proof rests on the State throughout the trial, even when defendant's evidence tends to show that he acted only in his own necessary self-defense. State v. Carver, supra; State v. Gibson, 196 N.C. 393, 145 S.E. 772; State v. Redditt, 189 N.C. 176, 126 S.E. 506; State v. Revels, 227 N.C. 34, 40 S.E.2d 474; 6 C.J.S., Assault and Battery, § 114, page 975.

Defendant's evidence tending to show that he did not commit an assault upon, or willingly engage in an affray with, the prosecuting witness, but only did what reasonably appeared to him to be necessary to ward off or repel an assault being made on him is offered to rebut, impeach, or discredit the evidence offered by the State or to 'muddy the waters' so as to create a reasonable doubt as to his guilt.

'If the defendant's evidence raised a reasonable doubt as to his guilt, or if such evidence caused to linger in the minds of the jury from the original presumption of innocence a reasonable doubt as to his guilt, or if upon all the evidence the jury entertained a...