State v. McMillan
Decision Date | 23 May 1951 |
Docket Number | No. 649,649 |
Citation | 233 N.C. 630,65 S.E.2d 212 |
Court | North Carolina Supreme Court |
Parties | STATE, v. McMILLAN. |
Harry McMullan, Atty. Gen., T. W. Bruton, Asst. Atty. Gen., and Walter F. Brinkley, Member of Staff, Raleigh, for the State.
Worth H. Hester, R. J. Hester, Jr., Elizabethtown, for defendant appellant.
By assignments of error 5 and 6, predicated upon exceptions 5 and 6, defendant challenges the correctness of these portions of the charge of the court to the jury:
; and
Defendant contends, and properly so, we hold, that these instructions are erroneous, in that they inveigh against the provisions of the statute, G.S. § 14-17, as amended by 1949 Session Laws of North Carolina, Chapter 299, Section 1, pertaining to punishment for murder in the first degree. This Section, as so amended, reads as follows: '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: Provided, if at the time of rendering its verdict in open court, the jury shall so recommend, the punishment shall be imprisonment for life in the state's prison, and the court shall so instruct the jury.' The proviso embraces the 1949 amendment.
The language of this amendment stands in bold relief. It is plain and free from ambiguity and expresses a single, definite and sensible meaning,--a...
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Crawford v. Bounds
...of N.C.Gen.Stat. § 14-17.5 The function of the jury under the amendment has been considered in many decisions. In State v. McMillan, 233 N.C. 630, 65 S.E.2d 212 (1951), it was held that an instruction to the jury that the statute gave them the right to recommend life imprisonment "if they f......
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State v. Atkinson, 22
...which would then be binding upon the court in the matter of sentence. State v. Carter, 243 N.C. 106, 89 S.E.2d 789; State v. McMillan, 233 N.C. 630, 65 S.E.2d 212. The jury actually selected to try the defendant in the present case was so instructed. Since the verdict of a jury must be unan......
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State v. Jarrette
...N.C. 113, 105 S.E.2d 446; State v. Conner, 241 N.C. 468, 85 S.E.2d 584; State v. Simmons, 234 N.C. 290, 66 S.E.2d 897; State v. McMillan, 233 N.C. 630, 65 S.E.2d 212; State v. Shackleford, 232 N.C. 299, 59 S.E.2d 825; State v. Mathis, 230 N.C. 508, 53 S.E.2d 666. This, Furman held, the Stat......
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State v. Spence, 658
...the punishment be imprisonment for life in the State's prison, is a matter within the 'unbridled' discretion of the jury. State v. McMillan, 233 N.C. 630, 65 S.E.2d 212; State v. Denny, 249 N.C. 113, 105 S.E.2d 446. The opinion in McMillan states: 'No conditions are attached to, and no qual......