State v. Blanding

• Court: Court of Appeals of South Carolina
• Decided: December 22, 2004
• Docket: 2004-UP-653
• Status: Unpublished

Opinion

THIS OPINION HAS NO PRECEDENTIAL VALUE.  IT SHOULD NOT BE CITED OR RELIED ON AS PRECEDENT IN ANY PROCEEDING EXCEPT AS PROVIDED BY RULE 239(d)(2), SCACR.

THE STATE OF SOUTH CAROLINA
In The Court of Appeals

The State,        Respondent,

v.

Ronald Blanding,        Appellant.

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Appeal From Dorchester County
Diane Schafer Goodstein, Circuit Court Judge

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Unpublished Opinion No. 2004-UP-653
Submitted December 1, 2004 – Filed December 22, 2004

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AFFIRMED

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Assistant Appellate Defender Robert M. Dudek, Office of Appellate Defense, of Columbia, for Appellant.

Attorney General Henry Dargan McMaster, Chief Deputy Attorney General John W. McIntosh, Assistant Deputy Attorney General Donald J. Zelenka, Assistant Attorney General Derrick K. McFarland, all of Columbia; and Solicitor Walter M. Bailey, Jr., of Summerville, for Respondent.

PER CURIAM:  Dorchester County grand jurors indicted Ronald Blanding for murder.  At trial, Blanding petitioned the trial judge to charge the jury with the lesser-included offense of voluntary manslaughter.  The trial judge rejected this request, and the jury found Blanding guilty as charged.  Blanding appeals on the ground that the trial judge erred in failing to instruct the jury on voluntary manslaughter.  We affirm pursuant to Rule 220(b)(2), SCACR, and the following authorities:  Harris v. State, 354 S.C. 382, 387, 581 S.E.2d 154, 156 (2003) (providing voluntary manslaughter is the unlawful killing of a human being in the sudden heat of passion upon sufficient legal provocation); State v. Knoten, 347 S.C. 296, 302, 555 S.E.2d 391, 394 (2001) (holding the law to be charged must be determined from the evidence presented at trial); State v. Byrd, 323 S.C. 319, 319, 474 S.E.2d 430, 430 (1996) (providing that in determining whether the evidence requires a charge of voluntary manslaughter, appellate courts view the facts in a light most favorable to the defendant); State v. Cole, 338 S.C. 97, 101, 525 S.E.2d 511, 513 (2000) (“To warrant a court’s eliminating the offense of manslaughter, it should very clearly appear that there is no evidence whatsoever tending to reduce the crime from murder to manslaughter.”); Cole, 338 S.C. at 101-02, 525 S.E.2d at 513 (“Both heat of passion and sufficient legal provocation must be present at the time of the killing” to reduce murder to manslaughter.)  State v. Hughey, 339 S.C. 439, 452, 529 S.E.2d 721, 728 (2000) (“Even when a person’s passions were sufficiently aroused by a legally adequate provocation, if at the time of the killing those passions had cooled or a sufficiently reasonable time had elapsed so that the passions of the ordinary reasonable person would have cooled, the killing would be murder and not manslaughter.”)

AFFIRMED. [1]

HEARN, C.J., and GOOLSBY and WILLIAMS, JJ., concur.

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[1]   We decide this case without oral argument pursuant to Rule 215, and 220(b)(2) SCACR.