# State v. Greene

> Supreme Court of North Carolina · February 9, 1989 · 324 N.C. 1

URL: https://www.frixlaw.com/law-library/cases/9585828

## Case

- **Full name:** State of North Carolina v. Gary Dean Greene
- **Court:** Supreme Court of North Carolina
- **Decided:** February 9, 1989
- **Citations:** 324 N.C. 1; 376 S.E.2d 430; 1989 N.C. LEXIS 15
- **Precedential status:** Published
- **Opinion:** Concurrence by Exum
- **Judges:** Exum, Frye, Whichard
- **Cited by:** 53 later opinions in the Frix Law Library

## Citator (automated)

- **Red flag:** Vacated on other grounds by Greene v. North Carolina, 494 U.S. 1022 (1990).
- Negative treatments: 1
- Distinguished by: 1
- Full citator and citing cases: https://www.frixlaw.com/law-library/cases/9585828

## How later opinions describe it (automated extraction)

- 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
- finding death penalty proportionate where defendant committed brutal patricide

## Opinion text

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.

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Source: Frix Law Library, https://www.frixlaw.com/law-library/cases/9585828. Public record. Not legal advice.