holding that, even assuming error, admission of the defendant’s statement was harmless beyond a reasonable doubt because the “statement d[id] nothing to inculpate [the] defendant and [was] not probative of his - 29 - STATE V. KNIGHT Opinion of the Court guilt or innocence”
How later courts described this case
- holding that, even assuming error, admission of the defendant’s statement was harmless beyond a reasonable doubt because the “statement d[id] nothing to inculpate [the] defendant and [was] not probative of his - 29 - STATE V. KNIGHT Opinion of the Court guilt or innocence”
- finding the death penalty not disproportionate where the defendant committed a brutal parricide
- approving combining and submitting within the context of two separate statutory mitigating circumstances defendant’s independently proffered mitigation statements
- finding death penalty proportionate where defendant committed brutal patricide
Written by the judges who cited it.
Distinguished
Distinguished by State v. Quesinberry, 325 N.C. 125 (1989)
In our proportionality analysis, we distinguished Greene from other robbery-murder cases on the basis that the defendant killed his father.
The opinion
Chief Justice EXUM
concurring.
I concur with the majority’s treatment of all issues in the guilt and sentencing phases of this trial.
If in the sentencing phase the Court were addressing for the first time the mitigating circumstance unanimity instruction issue, I would agree with defendant’s position that these instructions violate the Eighth Amendment to the federal constitution as that amendment was interpreted in Mills v. Maryland, 486 U.S. ---, 100 L.Ed. 2d 384 (1988), for the reasons stated in my dissenting opinions in State v. McKoy, 323 N.C. 1 , 372 S.E. 2d 12 (1988), and State v. Allen, 323 N.C. 208 , 372 S.E. 2d 855 (1988). The majority’s position on this issue is, as a result of the Court’s decisions in McKoy and Allen , the law of this state to which I am now bound. For this reason I concur with the majority’s treatment of this issue.