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North Carolina v. Cummings10/6/1988
Defendant assigns error to both the guilt phase and the sentencing phase of his capital trial. Having carefully reviewed the entire record and each of defendant's arguments, we find no error in either phase and decline to disturb defendant's conviction and sentence.
The state's evidence tended to show the following: On 16 August 1986 the body of Jesse Ward, aged seventy-seven, was discovered in the kitchen of his Robeson County home. The victim had spent the previous day helping his brother-in-law, Henry Powell, fix a lawn mower and had planned to return to Powell's home on the morning of the sixteenth to finish the job. When the victim did not arrive as scheduled, Powell called him on the telephone repeatedly but always received a busy signal. Later that day Powell and his grandson Richard went by the victim's house. Richard and a neighbor entered the house through the back door and discovered the victim's body on the kitchen floor. They observed two holes in the victim's abdomen and blood on his trousers. The victim held the telephone receiver in his left hand, pressed against his ear.
Investigators recovered a cartridge casing from the grass near the back door and a spent .22-caliber bullet from the kitchen sink. There were two round holes in the back screen door. An
autopsy performed by Dr. Marvin Thompson revealed two penetrating gunshot entrance wounds on the victim's abdomen and a single exit wound on his back. A .22-caliber bullet was lodged in the victim's spinal column and his abdominal cavity contained two liters of blood. Dr. Thompson determined the cause of death to be "hemorrhage secondary to gunshot wounds."
The shooting occurred just north of Maxton near the intersection of Highway 71 and Rural Paved Road 1312. The victim's home sits approximately 135 feet east of a small grocery store located at the corner of the intersection. Haven Betsy's house is some 527 feet south of the store. On 17 August Detective A. W. Oxendine took statements from Grady Jacobs and Patty Faye Locklear, residents of the Betsy home. Shortly thereafter Oxendine obtained a warrant for defendant's arrest.
The state based its case primarily upon Patty Faye Locklear's eyewitness account of the crime. Ms. Locklear testified that on 15 August 1986 she was living at Haven Betsy's house with her boyfriend Grady Jacobs. Defendant, who is Jacobs' first cousin, had also been living there but had moved out at the end of July after threatening to kill Betsy during a drunken confrontation. Nonetheless, he continued to visit the Betsy home every evening after work. Defendant often displayed a silver .22-caliber pistol: "We would be sitting in the house -- you know -- drinking and he never would pull it out until he got real high."
Jacobs and Ms. Locklear had become acquainted with their elderly neighbor, the victim Jesse Ward, several weeks before the crime. Mr. Ward gave them rides to Lumberton and on one occasion they spent the night at his home. On 5 August 1986, Jacobs bought a dog from Mr. Ward, making a down payment of seven or eight dollars. However, the dog soon escaped from its new owner and returned to the Ward home. Jacobs retrieved the dog but it got loose once more, never to be seen again.
On the evening of 15 August defendant came by Haven Betsy's house. Ms. Locklear, Jacobs, and defendant drank for about thirty minutes, then walked to a friend's house about three-quarters of a mile away. Jacobs, who had broken his foot two days before, used crutches and walked very slowly. Defendant drank about a half a fifth of liquor during the visit. On the way back to Betsy's, the group stopped by the Ward home because
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