State v. Eason
| Decision Date | 29 July 1994 |
| Docket Number | No. 280A93,280A93 |
| Citation | 336 N.C. 730,445 S.E.2d 917 |
| Parties | STATE of North Carolina v. James Felton EASON. |
| Court | North Carolina Supreme Court |
Michael F. Easley, Atty. Gen. by Thomas F. Moffitt, Sp. Deputy Atty. Gen., for the State.
William F.W. Massengale and Marilyn G. Ozer, Chapel Hill, for defendant-appellant.
In a capital trial, the jury found defendant guilty of the first-degree murder of Kirk Upchurch. He was also found guilty of two counts of assault with a deadly weapon with intent to kill inflicting serious injury. Following the guilt phase of the murder trial, the State offered no additional evidence at sentencing, and the trial court determined that the State's guilt-phase evidence was insufficient to warrant submission of any capital sentencing aggravating circumstances to the jury. It accordingly sentenced defendant to life imprisonment on the murder charge. It sentenced him to twenty years imprisonment on each of the assault charges, the sentences to run consecutively. We find no error.
The State's evidence tended to show that on the evening of 16 July 1990, defendant was drinking beer and shooting pool at the Silver Bullet, a lounge located at the Comfort Inn in Dunn, North Carolina. Kirk Upchurch, Raymond Houston, Paige Thomas, Charles Parker and William Medley also were patronizing the Silver Bullet that night. Claudette Roberts was tending bar, and Ricky Hall was assisting her.
During a game of pool, defendant became angry, walked between the pool tables, snapped a pool cue over his knee, and approached the bar with the two halves of the pool cue in his hands. He said he had been getting ready to play when someone hit him hard in the testicles. He said to Thomas, "That son of a bitch just jabbed me in the nuts with a pool stick," pointing to Charles Parker. There was evidence that neither Upchurch, Thomas nor Houston saw the incident. Parker and Medley testified they had no knowledge of it.
At the bar, Upchurch was trying to calm defendant. Defendant remained upset and moved to the other end of the bar. Shortly thereafter, defendant moved to Upchurch's end of the bar and seated himself next to Upchurch. The telephone rang. One of Upchurch's friends asked to speak to Upchurch. She could hear Upchurch's voice as he neared the phone, then a woman screaming "make him stop it!". Then the phone went dead.
Houston was standing at the bar when he saw defendant scuffling with Upchurch. Houston tried to part them. Claudette Roberts went to Upchurch, who by this time was behind the bar clutching his throat, which had been sliced and was completely open. Upchurch died as a result of these wounds. Roberts then saw defendant standing over Houston, cutting his throat. Houston testified that he had taken a step toward Upchurch and defendant when defendant grabbed him, spun him around backwards, picked him up by the throat, and threw him to the floor. Paige Thomas took Houston to the hospital.
Parker testified that while defendant was attacking Upchurch and Houston, he was putting his pool cue back in the rack, oblivious to what was happening at the bar. Defendant then attacked him from behind, cutting his mouth and part of his face. Roberts attempted to get help but was thwarted because the phone had been broken during the attack on Upchurch. After verbal exchanges between defendant and Roberts, in which defendant said he would kill her also, defendant left.
Officer James Cannady of the Dunn Police Department was dispatched to the Comfort Inn and arrived around 1:00 a.m. As Cannady walked toward the motel entrance, he heard Ricky Hall say that defendant was the one who "did it" and "get him." Defendant ran behind a house and hid. He soon was cornered by four police officers. When told he would be shot if he did not drop the knife, defendant closed the blade of the knife and dropped it. Once he dropped the knife, however, he refused to give up, and it took all four officers to wrestle him to the ground. When apprehended, defendant had blood on his clothing and a bloody knife in his hands.
During the drive to the police station, defendant spontaneously stated that he thought he had killed all three of the victims and deserved whatever he was going to get. He also stated, "I should have killed them. I should have killed them when I had the Captain Sills testified that as defendant was being taken to the processing room, he heard defendant spontaneously say "that he knew he had killed the mother ______, and he hoped the mother ______ down there didn't have AIDS and that he knowed one was dead because he stuck him real good." When defendant arrived at the station, he received the Miranda warnings, but refused to make a statement. About an hour later, when the investigating officer arrived, defendant again received Miranda warnings. At this time, defendant made a tape-recorded statement which was essentially a confession.
chance." Later at the station, defendant stated, "If [I] had the time to go back over it again, I would kill you SOBs too," referring to the officers
Defendant offered no evidence.
Defendant first assigns error to the trial court's denial of his motion to prohibit the prosecutor from using a peremptory challenge in a discriminatory manner. He asserts that in striking a Jehovah's Witness from the jury, the State violated the First and Fourteenth Amendments to the United States Constitution and Article I, Section 26 of the North Carolina Constitution.
Article I, Section 26 of the North Carolina Constitution states: "No person shall be excluded from jury service on account of sex, race, color, religion, or national origin." Defendant claims that in striking a Jehovah's Witness from the jury with a peremptory challenge, the State violated the prohibition on religious discrimination. We disagree.
In enacting Article I, Section 26, the citizens of North Carolina rejected the corruption of their jury system by any form of irrational prejudice. State v. Moore, 329 N.C. 245, 247, 404 S.E.2d 845, 847 (1991); State v. Cofield, 320 N.C. 297, 302-04, 357 S.E.2d 622, 625-27 (1987). The elimination of discrimination was essential to protect not only the rights of the defendant but also the integrity of the judicial system. Moore, 329 N.C. at 247-48, 404 S.E.2d at 847-48. Discrimination in selecting juries so strongly taints the judicial system that any proceeding in which it appears is fatally flawed. Cofield, 320 N.C. at 304, 357 S.E.2d at 627. For this reason, the fact that the defendant's race or religion differs from the excluded person's is irrelevant. See Powers v. Ohio, 499 U.S. 400, 111 S.Ct. 1364, 113 L.Ed.2d 411 (1991) (); Moore, 329 N.C. at 246-48, 404 S.E.2d at 847-48.
The potential juror here was not stricken solely because she was a Jehovah's Witness, however. Rather, the prospective juror, because of her strong personal and religious convictions, expressed reservations about the death penalty and was stricken because of these reservations. When a potential juror has convictions that would prevent him or her from voting to impose the death penalty, without regard to the evidence presented at trial, that juror is properly excused for cause. Witherspoon v. Illinois, 391 U.S. 510, 523 n. 21, 88 S.Ct. 1770, 1777 n. 21, 20 L.Ed.2d 776, 785 n. 21 (1968); State v. Davis, 325 N.C. 607, 386 S.E.2d 418 (1989), cert. denied, 496 U.S. 905, 110 S.Ct. 2587, 110 L.Ed.2d 268 (1990). When a juror's reservations about the death penalty are not so grave as to merit an excusal for cause under Witherspoon, the juror frequently is excused with a peremptory challenge. State v. Allen, 323 N.C. 208, 221-22, 372 S.E.2d 855, 863 (1988), sentence vacated on other grounds, 494 U.S. 1021, 110 S.Ct. 1463, 108 L.Ed.2d 601 (1990), on remand, sentence reinstated, 331 N.C. 746, 417 S.E.2d 227 (1992), cert. denied, 507 U.S. 967, 113 S.Ct. 1402, 122 L.Ed.2d 775 (1993). In Allen, we held that this violated neither the North Carolina nor the United States Constitution. Id. 323 N.C. at 222, 372 S.E.2d at 863. We have noted that the exercise of peremptory challenges is frequently " 'more art than science' " and is based on "legitimate 'hunches' and past experience." State v. Thomas, 329 N.C. 423, 432, 407 S.E.2d 141, 147 (1991) (quoting State v. Porter, 326 N.C. 489, 497, 391 S.E.2d 144, 150 (1990)). Because so much of the peremptory challenge determination depends on feel and intuition, great deference must be given to the trial judge who actually saw and heard the potential juror. Wainwright v. Witt, 469 U.S. 412, 424-26, 105 S.Ct. 844, 852-53, 83 Here, potential juror Shirley McKoy expressed reservations about the death penalty. After the trial judge asked the prospective jurors if any of them had feelings about capital punishment that might substantially impair their ability to consider it fairly, the following exchange occurred:
L.Ed.2d 841, 851-53 (1985); Davis, 325 N.C. at 622, 386 S.E.2d at 425.
The prosecutor later renewed this discussion, attempting to clarify McKoy's feelings about the death penalty:
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