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North Carolina v. Robinson5/6/1994
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MS. MARTIN: No.
Juror Martin's responses unequivocally indicate that her feelings about the death penalty would prevent her from following the law and from being a fair and impartial juror. The trial court properly excused Ms. Martin.
Defendant contends that the trial court should have explained the law to Ms. Martin or that counsel for defendant should have been allowed to rehabilitate juror Martin with further questioning about her feelings on the death penalty. However, "where the record shows the challenge is supported by the prospective juror's answers to the prosecutor's and court's questions, absent a showing that further questioning would have elicited different answers, the court does not err by refusing to permit the defendant to propound questions about the same matter." State v. Gibbs, 335 N.C. 1, 35, 436 S.E.2d 321, 340 (1993). Nor is there any requirement that the trial court offer any further explanation of the law of capital sentencing. Defendant's assignment of error on these grounds is overruled.
SENTENCING PROCEEDING ISSUES
In his next assignment of error, defendant contends that the trial court erred when it refused to allow the jury to consider as mitigation consecutive forty-, twenty-, and twenty-year sentences imposed on defendant for crimes arising from the same transaction as the murder.
At trial, defendant requested that the following instruction be given to the jury:
The defendant has already received an 80-year sentence in this case for the following convictions: (1) robbery with a dangerous weapon whereby he received a 40-year sentence and (2) two counts of assault with a deadly weapon with intent to kill resulting in serious bodily injury in which the defendant received 20 years on each count.
As support for the submission of this instruction, defendant relies on the rule established in Lockett v. Ohio, 438 U.S. 586, 57 L. Ed. 2d 973, 98 S. Ct. 2954 (1978). In that case, it was held that "the sentencer [must] . . . not be precluded from considering, as a mitigating factor, any aspect of a defendant's character or record and any of the circumstances of the offense that the defendant proffers as a basis for a sentence less than death." Id. at 604, 57 L. Ed. 2d at 990.
In State v. Price, 331 N.C. 620, 418 S.E.2d 169 (1992), sentence vacated, U.S. , 122 L. Ed. 2d 113, on remand, 334 N.C. 615, 433 S.E.2d 746 (1993), petition for cert. filed (No. 93-7348, 29 December 1993), we held "that defendant is currently serving a life sentence for another unrelated crime is not a circumstance which tends to justify a sentence less than death for the capital crime for which defendant is being sentenced." Id. at 634, 418 S.E.2d at 177. We think the same is true in the present case when defendant has been subjected to separate sentences for the offenses committed pursuant to the same crime.
Reference to additional sentences when a jury is considering a life sentence or a sentence of death necessarily injects the issue of parole into the proceedings. For information of separate sentences to have any bearing on a jury's choice between life imprisonment and death, the jury must presuppose the possibility of defendant's parole for his potential life sentence. As this Court held in State v. Robbins, "a criminal defendant's status under the parole laws
is irrelevant to a sentencing determination and, as such, cannot be considered by the jury during sentencing, whether in a capital sentencing pr
Page 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 North Carolina DUI Attorneys
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