89 N.C.App. 384, 366 S.E.2d 586
Judy Norman was tried at the 16 February 1987 Criminal Session of Superior Court for Rutherford County upon a proper indictment charging her with the first degree murder of her husband, John Thomas Norman.1 The jury found the defendant guilty of voluntary manslaughter, and the trial court sentenced her to six years imprisonment.2 The Court of Appeals granted a new trial, and the Supreme Court of North Carolina granted review.3
On the night of 12 June 1985, Deputy Sheriff R.H. Epley of the Rutherford County Sheriff's Department was called to the Norman residence.4 He found John Thomas Norman lying on a bed with his face toward the wall.5 He was dead from three gunshot wounds to the back of the head, two of which caused fatal brain injury.6 His blood alcohol level was .12 percent.7
Later that night the defendant told Epley, after waiving her rights, that her husband had beaten her all day and made her lie on the floor while he slept on the bed.8 After he fell asleep she carried her grandchild to her mother's house.9 She took a pistol from her mother's purse, returned, fixed the gun after it jammed, and shot her husband three times in the back of the head.10
The defendant presented evidence of a long history of physical and mental abuse by her husband due to his alcoholism over the nearly twenty-five years of their marriage.11 Her husband frequently assaulted her by slapping, punching, kicking, striking her with objects, throwing glasses and beer bottles at her, putting her cigarettes out on her, throwing hot coffee on her, breaking glass against her face, and crushing food on her face.12 He forced her to make money through prostitution, called her "dog," "bitch," and "whore," made her eat pet food and bark like a dog, made her sleep on the floor, deprived her of food, and threatened numerous times to kill or maim her.13
On 10 June 1985 the husband, while intoxicated, assaulted the defendant at a rest area off I-85 near Kings Mountain where she was engaging in prostitution.14 He was arrested for driving while impaired.15 He was released the next morning on bond paid by the defendant's mother and resumed drinking and abusing her.16
On 11 June, sheriff's deputies responded to calls at the residence after the defendant said her husband had been beating her all day.17 She later took a bottle of pills and was taken to the hospital for treatment.18 While there, she expressed anger toward her husband and threatened to kill him.19
On 12 June the defendant went to the mental health center to discuss filing charges and possible commitment of her husband.20 She confronted him with that possibility.21 Her husband followed her to the social services office where he interrupted her interview.22 That evening after her husband fell asleep the defendant took their grandchild to her mother's house, returned with the pistol, and shot him.23
Two expert witnesses in forensic psychology and psychiatry who examined the defendant after the shooting testified that she fit the profile of battered wife syndrome.24 They testified that she believed she was unable to escape or expect help from others.25 They also testified that killing her husband appeared reasonably necessary to her at the time.26
Whether the evidence supported a jury instruction on perfect self-defense?27
In North Carolina, a defendant is entitled to a jury instruction on perfect self-defense when the evidence viewed in the light most favorable to the defendant tends to show that at the time of the killing it appeared to the defendant and she believed it to be necessary to kill the decedent to save herself from imminent death or great bodily harm.28 That belief must be reasonable under the circumstances as they appeared to her.29
No. The established facts show that the defendant shot her sleeping husband three times in the back of the head after retrieving a pistol from her mother's house while he remained in bed.30 No action by the decedent was underway at the moment of the shooting from which a jury could find reasonable grounds to believe a felonious assault was imminent or that death or great bodily injury would result.31 The defendant had left the residence earlier and returned with the weapon, giving her ample time and opportunity to seek other means of protection.32 Expert testimony described the defendant's belief that she was doomed to worsening torture and that death was inevitable.
Yet it supplied no indication of an imminent threat of death or great bodily harm at the precise time of the killing.33
The trial court correctly refused to instruct the jury on perfect self-defense because the evidence failed to show any reasonable belief by the defendant that she faced imminent death or great bodily harm when she shot her husband.34
Related opinions on this issue
Justice Martin dissented on the ground that the evidence when viewed most favorably to the defendant was sufficient to require a self-defense instruction.35 He maintained that the term imminent must be understood from the defendant's perspective and is shaped by the entire history of abuse rather than by clock time alone.36 In his view, the constant state of terror experienced by a battered spouse renders the next attack perpetually imminent.37 A juror could reasonably conclude the defendant believed serious harm was about to occur even while her husband slept.38
The intensified violence of the final three days supplied facts from which the jury could find both the subjective belief and its objective reasonableness under the ordinary-firmness standard.39
Whether the evidence supported a jury instruction on imperfect self-defense?40
A defendant is entitled to an instruction on imperfect self-defense when the evidence tends to show that she killed under a reasonable belief that it was necessary to do so to avoid imminent death or great bodily harm even though she was the initial aggressor or otherwise not entitled to perfect self-defense.41 In such cases the defendant is guilty at least of voluntary manslaughter.42
No. The same absence of evidence of imminent harm that defeats perfect self-defense also defeats imperfect self-defense under the established facts.43 The defendant approached a sleeping victim after an interval during which she could have pursued other remedies.44 The expert testimony again failed to establish any perception of an immediate threat at the moment of the shooting.45 Because the jury convicted the defendant of voluntary manslaughter an instruction on imperfect self-defense would have produced no different result even if it had been warranted.46
The trial court did not err in refusing an imperfect self-defense instruction because the evidence did not support a finding of reasonable belief in imminent death or great bodily harm.47
Related opinions on this issue
Justice Martin would have held that the evidence supported an instruction on self-defense in either its perfect or imperfect form.48 He stressed that the continuing nature of the assault in a battering relationship means the defendant never ceased to be the victim.49 The jury could have found the force used was not excessive given the defendant's long immobilization by fear.50
In his judgment the state's burden to prove the absence of justification beyond a reasonable doubt was not met once the defendant introduced evidence of twenty years of abuse culminating in the final days of intensified violence.51