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North Carolina v. Green3/9/1988
habitually spent his evenings sitting at the bar, alternately drinking beer and falling asleep or passing out with his head on his arms, sleeping and waking, only to fall asleep again. On the night of the Chief's Club murders, Garland Williams had embarked upon a typical evening of drinking and dozing at the bar. Another habitue of the Chief's Club testified that he
observed Williams passed out at the bar, with his head on his arms, at approximately 1:30 a.m. on the morning of 12 February. When J. C. Sandy, the last patron to leave the bar, went briefly back inside with Jimmy Grimes shortly before 3:00 a.m., Williams was once more awake.
The state also presented evidence which tended to show that Williams was sitting facing the bar, either asleep or immobilized with fear, when he was shot. Forensic evidence was presented which suggested that Williams was shot from behind. The trajectory of all three bullets which hit him, one in the back and two in the head, was upward, lending support to the hypothesis that he was shot in the back while asleep or while simply arrested in fear at the bar, in the position in which he had been when wakened. There was no evidence of any struggle preceding his death. Apparently he had not been engaged in any active resistance to his killer, as had Jimmy Grimes who had defensive wounds on his right hand and arm. Unlike Charlie Johnson, who had weapons behind the bar, there was no evidence that Garland Williams was armed and could have presented a threat to his killer. On the basis of this evidence the state argued that Williams was killed while in a defenseless position, to eliminate him as a witness to the killings of Grimes and Johnson.
Defendant contends that the Goodman requirement -- that evidence in addition to the mere fact of death must be presented if witness elimination is to be legitimately submitted as a circumstance in aggravation -- can only be satisfied by a statement made by the defendant prior to the shooting to the effect that fear of arrest was a motivating factor. While it is true that such statements have been adduced in evidence to support the factor of witness elimination in the few witness-elimination cases that have come before this Court, we have nowhere held that such statements are essential to establish this aggravating circumstance. State v. Lawson, 310 N.C. 632, 314 S.E.2d 493 (1984), cert. denied, 471 U.S. 1120, 86 L. Ed. 2d 267 (1985); State v. Oliver, 309 N.C. 326, 307 S.E.2d 304 (1983); State v. Willams, 304 N.C. 394, 284 S.E.2d 437 (1981), cert. denied, 456 U.S. 932, 72 L. Ed. 2d 450 (1982); State v. Goodman, 298 N.C. 1, 257 S.E.2d 569. In the case before us, the physical evidence, coupled with testimony about the drinking habits of Garland Williams and his behavior on the night he was murdered, is sufficient to put the aggravating circumstance before the jury.
Defendant also protests the propriety of the submission of witness elimination as an aggravating circumstance on the grounds that the jury was asked to consider two aggravating circumstances based on the same evidence. Defendant argues that the same evidence with which the state supports witness elimination is also presented to establish that Garland Williams was killed in a course of violent conduct in which Jimmy Grimes and Charlie Johnson were killed. In Goodman, we held that the submission of two issues on the same evidence is improper because it is "an unnecessary duplication of the circumstan
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