State v. Munn
| Decision Date | 29 March 1904 |
| Parties | STATE . v. MUNN. |
| Court | North Carolina Supreme Court |
HOMICIDE—INSTRUCTIONS—HARMLESS ERROR.
1. On a prosecution for murder, any error in the charge as to. mitigation below murder in the second degree was harmless, where the jury found that defendant killed deceased willfully, deliberately, and with premeditation, and that he was guilty of murder in the first degree, after they had been fully instructed as to the difference between murder in the first and second degrees.
¶ 1. See Homicide, vol. 26, Cent. Dig. § 720.
Appeal from Superior Court, Cumberland County; Bryan, Judge.
William R. Munn was convicted of murder In the first degree, and he appeals. Affirmed.
Thos. H. Sutton, for appellant.
The Attorney General and N. A. Sinclair, for the State.
In this case, if the evidence of the state is to be believed—and the jury by their verdict have found it to be true— a most aggravated and inhuman murder was committed by the prisoner. It is our province to consider only the alleged errors of law committed by the trial judge, and which his counsel has seen fit to point out and assign by exceptions thereto taken in apt time and duly entered in the record. Rule 27 of this court (39 S. E. vii) provides: "No other exceptions than those set out or filed and made part of the case shall be considered by this court, other than exceptions to the jurisdiction, or because the complaint does not state a cause of action, or motions in arrest for the insufficiency of an indictment" This rule formulates the decisions of this court.
See cases cited in Clark's Code (3d Ed.) pp. 512, 514. The errors alleged have been ably and exhaustively argued by the prisoner's counsel, and the court has carefully and diligently examined each and every exception with proper regard to the importance of the case. We find no error therein. In a case of this nature, whenever there is reason to believe that injustice has been done, and a meritorious exception has by some inadvertence not been taken, the Attorney General has always consented cheerfully to an exception being entered here nunc pro tunc. The point counsel wished to present, though not excepted to, that there was error in the charge as to mitigation from murder in the second degree, would not be before us even If it had been excepted to, for the reason that the jury found, upon the very full and careful charge of the court as to the difference between murder in the first and second degrees,...
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