State v. Ahearn

295 S.E.2d 621, 59 N.C. App. 44, 1982 N.C. App. LEXIS 2858
CourtCourt of Appeals of North Carolina
DecidedOctober 5, 1982
Docket821SC78
StatusPublished
Cited by6 cases

This text of 295 S.E.2d 621 (State v. Ahearn) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Court of Appeals of North Carolina primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
State v. Ahearn, 295 S.E.2d 621, 59 N.C. App. 44, 1982 N.C. App. LEXIS 2858 (N.C. Ct. App. 1982).

Opinions

[47]*47HEDRICK, Judge.

The prison terms imposed by the trial court in the present case exceed the designated presumptive terms prescribed by G.S. § 15A-1340.4(f), and in imposing such terms the trial court was required by G.S. § 15A-1340.4(b) to list the factors he found in aggravation and mitigation. This appeal is pursuant to G.S. § 15A-1444(al) which states:

A defendant who has . . . entered a plea of guilty ... to a felony, is entitled to appeal as a matter of right the issue of whether his sentence is supported by evidence introduced at the trial and sentencing hearing only if the prison term of the sentence exceeds the presumptive term set by G.S. 15A-1340.4, and if the judge was required to make findings as to aggravating or mitigating factors pursuant to this Article.

The first assignment of error brought forward in defendant’s brief is that

[t]he Trial Judge committed prejudicial error in making [the] additional written findings of factors in aggravation that ‘The defendant fails to control his emotions. He sometimes reacts violently to frustrations he experiences, and the defendant is dangerous to himself and to others and confinement is needed to ensure his safety and the safety of others.’ In the context of this record such findings do not constitute in fact or in law factors in aggravation but to the contrary, such findings constitute in the context of this record factors [in] mitigation, and such findings by the Court and the Court’s interpretation thereof are not supported by the evidence, and constitute prejudicial error as a matter of law.

First, the record reveals the following evidence which is sufficient to support the challenged finding: defendant has “serious emotional problems” and “is extremely disorganized” and thereby “literally loses control of his ability to reason and understand what he is doing;” there are episodes during which he is dangerous to himself and to others; he lacks internal controls and hence is capable of saying or doing things he does not mean, and even without his knowing to whom he was doing them; and he is capable of becoming so caught up in an act as to inflict damage on someone without knowing how much damage he was doing and without knowing when to stop.

[48]*48Defendant also argues that this finding by the court cannot properly be considered as an aggravating factor in the balancing process involved in G.S. § 15A-1340.4 since the finding deals with his inability to control himself, a factor which was found to be a mitigating circumstance in the court’s “Mitigating Factors” numbered 4 and 5, set out above. It is true that defendant’s inability to control himself was considered as a mitigating factor when the court found he suffered from a culpability-reducing mental or physical condition and a culpability-reducing immaturing or limited mental capacity. Although there may be mitigating aspects about one's inability to control oneself, there may also be aggravating aspects of such a disorder, and the court did not err in also considering the aggravating aspect of defendant’s inability to control himself, to wit, the fact that it rendered him “dangerous to himself and to others” and in need of “confinement ... to ensure his safety and the safety of others.” This finding of dangerousness is a factor in aggravation since it is “reasonably related to the purposes of sentencing,” see G.S. § 15A-1340.4(a), one of which is “to protect the public by restraining offenders.” G.S. § 15A-1340.3. This assignment of error is overruled.

In his next three assignments of error, defendant argues (1) that the court erred in making the findings in aggravation that “[t]he offense was especially heinous, atrocious and cruel,” and that “[t]he victim was very young or mentally or physically infirm,” in that such findings were not supported by the evidence, and (2) that upon the elimination of these challenged findings of factors in aggravation, “as a matter of law the mitigating factors outweigh the factor or factors in aggravation that may be considered.”

Evidence was presented at the sentencing hearing which tended to show that the victim of defendant’s violence, Daniel Bright, was a two-year old child. This evidence, therefore, supports a finding that the victim was very young. Since the challenged finding is phrased in the disjunctive, evidence supporting a finding that the victim was very young necessarily supports the court’s finding that he was very young or mentally or physically infirm. The consideration of such finding in the voluntary manslaughter case was, accordingly, proper. The youth of the victim, however, may not be considered an aggravating factor in the felony child abuse case, since the youth of the victim is a [49]*49necessary element of felonious child abuse under G.S. § 14-318.4, and “[e]vidence necessary to prove an element of the offense may not be used to prove any factor in aggravation.” G.S. § 15A-1340.4(a)(l). The challenged factor in aggravation also cannot be made to apply in the felonious child abuse case on the basis of the “or mentally or physically infirm” clause, since there is no evidence to support that characterization of the victim. Although there was evidence that the victim, at the time he suffered violence at defendant’s hands, was in a cast and recovering from a femoral shaft fracture, this evidence is not sufficient to support the aggravating factor of physical infirmity within the meaning of the statute.

With respect to defendant’s challenge to the court’s finding that “[t]he offense was especially heinous, atrocious and cruel,” we will assume for the sake of argument that the finding is without evidentiary support in either the felonious child abuse case or the voluntary manslaughter case. This assumption is bolstered by our unawareness of anything that would distinguish defendant’s act of felonious child abuse as being any more heinous, atrocious, and cruel than any other act of felonious child abuse; it is bolstered in the voluntary manslaughter case in that one item of evidence which does render this act of voluntary manslaughter especially heinous, i.e. the youth of the victim, may not be considered to show that the offense was especially heinous since it was already used to show that the victim was very young — “the same item of evidence may not be used to prove more than one factor in aggravation.” G.S. § 15A-1340.4(a)(l).

Hence, in the felonious child abuse case, we assume the court erred in considering the “heinous offense” factor in aggravation and we hold that the court erred in considering the “very young or infirm victim” factor in aggravation, but the court did not err in considering the “dangerousness of defendant” factor in aggravation. In the voluntary manslaughter case, we assume the court erred in considering the “heinous offense” factor in aggravation, but did not err in considering the “very young victim” and “dangerousness of defendant” factors in aggravation. Defendant argues that the factors in aggravation which the court could legitimately consider could not, as a matter of law, have outweighed the five factors in mitigation found by the court, as they must under G.S. § 15A-1340.4(b) to justify the imposition of a [50]*50prison term in excess of the statutorily-prescribed presumptive terms. We disagree. It is not clear to us how the result to be determined by the court upon its weighing of aggravating and mitigating factors could ever be known as a matter of law.

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Related

State v. Evans
463 S.E.2d 830 (Court of Appeals of North Carolina, 1995)
Riley v. State
496 A.2d 997 (Supreme Court of Delaware, 1985)
State v. Abee
302 S.E.2d 230 (Supreme Court of North Carolina, 1983)
State v. Abee
298 S.E.2d 184 (Court of Appeals of North Carolina, 1982)
State v. Ahearn
295 S.E.2d 621 (Court of Appeals of North Carolina, 1982)

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Bluebook (online)
295 S.E.2d 621, 59 N.C. App. 44, 1982 N.C. App. LEXIS 2858, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/state-v-ahearn-ncctapp-1982.