finding sufficient evidence of motive where “the evidence showfed] that defendant wanted [the victim] dead; that he actively sought her death; and that he harbored great hostility toward her[,]” including telling the victim he would “grind her up like hamburger meat” and asking several people to kill his wife
How later courts described this case
- finding sufficient evidence of motive where “the evidence showfed] that defendant wanted [the victim] dead; that he actively sought her death; and that he harbored great hostility toward her[,]” including telling the victim he would “grind her up like hamburger meat” and asking several people to kill his wife
- because “[t]he gravamen of the offense of soliciting lies in counseling, enticing or inducing another to commit a crime,” it was of no consequence that the person solicited was only solicited to find a killer
- “The evidence shows that defendant wanted his wife dead; that he actively sought her death; and that he harbored great hostility toward her. This, however, without more is not enough to permit a jury to find that he killed her.”
- defendant guilty of solicitation by asking one person to solicit another to commit a murder
Written by the judges who cited it.
Distinguished
Distinguished by State v. Miles, 222 N.C. App. 593 (2012)
Both Lee and Furr are easily distinguishable from the present case.
The opinion
Justice Lake
dissenting in part.
I dissent from that portion of the decision which holds that the defendant’s conviction of murder is reversed and a nonsuit in that case must be granted. In my opinion, the evidence is sufficient to permit reasonable men to find that the defendant, either in person or through a killer procured by him for that purpose, murdered his wife. Consequently, the evidence was sufficient, in my opinion, to carry this case to the jury and to support its verdict of guilty of murder in the first degree. If that be true, the sentence to death must be vacated and a new judgment entered sentencing the defendant to life imprisonment by virtue of the decision of the Supreme *727 Court of the United States in Woodson v. North Carolina, 428 U.S. 280 (1976).
I concur in so much of the decision and majority opinion as relates to the several charges of solicitation to commit the felony of murder.
Chief Justice Sharp and Justice Huskins join in this dissenting opinion.