State v. Smith

• Decision Date: 25 August 2000
• Docket Number: No. 279A99.,279A99.
• Citation: 532 S.E.2d 773,352 N.C. 531
• Court: North Carolina Supreme Court
• Parties: STATE of North Carolina v. Jamie Lamont SMITH.

532 S.E.2d 773

352 N.C. 531

STATE of North Carolina v. Jamie Lamont SMITH.

No. 279A99.

Supreme Court of North Carolina.

August 25, 2000.

Michael F. Easley, Attorney General, by William P. Hart, Special Deputy Attorney General, for the State.

William F.W. Massengale and Marilyn G. Ozer, Chapel Hill, for defendant-appellant.

FREEMAN, Justice.

On 1 May 1995 the Buncombe County grand jury indicted defendant in true bills for murder in the first degree, first-degree burglary, robbery with a dangerous weapon, first-degree forcible rape, and first-degree arson. Defendant pled guilty to all charges. A jury recommended a sentence of death for the murder. The judge imposed sentences within the presumptive range authorized by N.C.G.S. §§ 15A-1340.17(c) for each of the lesser felonies, to run consecutively, and imposed a sentence of death for the murder.

The offenses for which defendant was sentenced in this case were committed on 16 January 1995. The victim, Kelli Froemke, a nineteen-year-old college student, lived with her brother and his girlfriend in their apartment in Asheville. In a statement later given to law enforcement officers, defendant said he gained entry to the apartment by asking Kelli, who was alone at the time, if he could use the telephone. Once in the apartment, defendant demanded money at knifepoint, then forced Kelli into her bedroom and raped her. He then stabbed her more than sixty times. Before leaving, defendant set a fire in the bedroom closet to cover up what he had done. He walked away from the apartment, carrying the cordless phone and Kelli's car keys with him. Kelli's brother and his girlfriend returned to the apartment shortly after 10:00 p.m. and found it full of smoke. After alerting a neighbor to call 911, Kelli's brother made his way through the smoke to Kelli's bedroom where he found her body. He pulled her onto a landing where he administered CPR until the fire department arrived.

Defendant was identified by a neighbor as having been seen around the apartment complex where Kelli lived on the night of the crime. He ultimately gave more than one statement to the police, first implicating a friend, then confessing it was his own intention to rob Kelli, whom he saw getting out of her car, for money for cocaine.

When asked about other recent crimes, defendant told officers he had pled guilty to larceny at the Mountain Trace apartment complex. He also implicated himself in a fire at the Grace Apartments. In subsequent statements defendant elaborated: on 11 December 1994 he and a friend went to the Grace Apartments, knocking on doors to see which apartments were occupied, intending to break in. They eventually stole the mail from the apartment mailboxes. Later that night they broke into a Mountain Trace apartment, stole a computer and other items, and attempted to cover up that theft by starting a fire. About a week later they returned to the Grace Apartments and started a second fire with kerosene to cover up their mail theft. This fire resulted in serious injuries and one death: Phillip Cotton, an eighteen-year-old, died of carbon monoxide poisoning. Another resident of the apartments hung out her window until her hands burned, then fell three stories, breaking her neck. A third resident suffered burns so severe her legs had to be amputated. Defendant was subsequently convicted of the crimes committed in these incidents and sentenced to death for the murder of Phillip Cotton.

Physical evidence corroborated defendant's statements, including a videotape of defendant and his companion buying kerosene the morning of the Grace Apartments fire and DNA evidence matching defendant to the spermatozoa found on Kelli's body. Defendant offered evidence in mitigation, including the testimony of a clinical and forensic psychologist about defendant's mental illness. Others testified about his close relationship with his mother and other family members and how at sixteen or seventeen he had lost interest in school and turned to alcohol and hard drugs.

Defendant first takes issue with the "short-form" bill of indictment, authorized by N.C.G.S. § 15-144, which states the crime charged as "first degree murder." Defendant argues the Due Process Clause of the Fifth Amendment and the notice and jury trial guarantees of the Sixth Amendment are violated by the indictment's failure to charge in the indictment the elements of the crime or aggravating circumstances as "fact[s](other than prior conviction) that increase[ ] the maximum penalty for [the] crime." Jones v. United States, 526 U.S. 227, 243 n. 6, 119 S.Ct. 1215, 1224 n. 6, 143 L.Ed.2d 311, 326 n. 6 (1999), quoted in Apprendi v. New Jersey, ___ U.S. ___, ___, 120 S.Ct. 2348, 2355, 147 L.Ed.2d 435, 446 (2000)

. We have recently decided this issue in State v. Braxton, 352 N.C. 158, 173-174, 531 S.E.2d 428, 437 (2000). There we noted not only that this Court has consistently held murder indictments based upon N.C.G.S. § 15-144 comply with both the North Carolina and United States Constitutions, id. at 174, 531 S.E.2d at 437 but that the short-form indictment is sufficient to charge murder in the first degree based on any theory set forth in N.C.G.S. § 14-17 and referenced on the indictment, id. Moreover, we held that because "[t]he crime of first-degree murder and the accompanying maximum penalty of death, as set forth in N.C.G.S. § 14-17 and North Carolina's capital sentencing statute, are encompassed within the language of the short-form indictment.... [N]o additional facts need[ ] ... be charged in the indictment" where the defendant, like defendant here, was sentenced to the prescribed maximum punishment for that crime. Id. at 173-176, 531 S.E.2d at 437-438.

We reiterate here that indictments based on N.C.G.S. § 15-144, like those charging defendant in this case, comply with both the North Carolina and the United States Constitutions. See State v. Wallace, 351 N.C. 481, 528 S.E.2d 326 (2000)

; State v. Williams, 304 N.C. 394, 422, 284 S.E.2d 437, 454 (1981),

cert. denied, 456 U.S. 932, 102 S.Ct. 1985, 72 L.Ed.2d 450 (1982). Defendant's assignments of error as to this issue are thus without merit.

Defendant next cites numerous instances in which he contends the jury selection process was flawed. First, he complains that he did not have equal access to the criminal records of prospective jurors. This was prompted by the prosecutor's challenging a juror whose questionnaire falsely indicated she had never been charged with a crime. When defense counsel asked for access to the same resources, the court suggested defendant attempt to get such information through the office of the public defender. Defendant notes that the public defender does not have access to the Police Information Network (PIN), which is available to the State, and that other mechanisms for obtaining such information through other databases are unreasonably onerous and not universally accessible. Although one authorized to do so may pay to run PIN checks, those who are indigent cannot. Defendant contends denying equal access in this way violates an indigent defendant's due process rights and his right to a fair and impartial jury under the Sixth and Fourteenth Amendments to the United States Constitution and Article I, Sections 19, 24, and 35 of the North Carolina Constitution.

Defendant did not ask for discovery of information or documents in the State's possession, but rather requested that the same resources from which such information was derived be accessible to him. Thus, categories of information discoverable under N.C.G.S. §§ 15A-903 and -904 and the trial court's discretion to order the disclosure of information not otherwise prohibited, see, e.g., State v. Warren, 347 N.C. 309, 492 S.E.2d 609 (1997),

cert. denied, 523 U.S. 1109, 118 S.Ct. 1681, 140 L.Ed.2d 818 (1998), are not implicated here. Rather, the trial court simply suggested an alternative means to the same end. The record reveals the prosecutor suggested the same information was attainable from the clerk's office upstairs in the same building, and defense counsel agreed to check those resources. Counsel did not subsequently object to the trial court's action or move for funds with which the defense could run its own criminal record checks. See N.C.G.S. § 7A-450(b) (1999) (State must provide indigent defendant with necessary expenses of representation); State v. Parks, 331 N.C. 649, 656, 417 S.E.2d 467, 471 (1992) (to receive state-funded expert assistance, indigent defendant must make "particularized showing that ... there is a reasonable likelihood that it would materially assist him in the preparation of his case"). The court's action here constitutes neither error of procedure nor error of law from which defendant might seek relief on appeal. See N.C.G.S. § 15A-1442 (1999).

The State's exercise of a peremptory challenge to excuse this same juror, an African-American, also prompted defendant's next several assignments of error. Defendant objected to the challenge, and the court excused the jury and asked the prosecutor her reason, the second step in the procedure outlined in Batson v. Kentucky, 476 U.S. 79, 106 S.Ct. 1712, 90 L.Ed.2d 69 (1986), for evaluating whether a prosecutor has used peremptory challenges in violation of the Equal Protection Clause. Briefly, the process requires the defendant to make a prima facie showing that the prosecutor has exercised a peremptory challenge on the basis of race. The burden then shifts to the prosecutor to articulate a race-neutral reason for excusing the juror in question. Finally, the court must determine whether the defendant has carried his burden of showing purposeful discrimination. Id. at 96-98, 106 S.Ct. at 1722-24, 90 L.Ed.2d at 87-88. Although in this case defendant never actually stated a prima facie case of discrimination, the absence of this step was moot once the prosecutor's stated reason and the court's determination had been made. Hernandez v....