Capital Punishment

Many observers expected the "evolving standards of decency" test to be invoked by a North Carolina defendant when prosecutors sought to impose the death penalty for crimes he committed during a 1996 drunk-driving incident that left two college students dead. Thomas Richard Jones was charged and convicted on one count of driving while impaired, one count of assault with a deadly weapon, three counts of assault with a deadly weapon inflicting serious injury, and two counts of first-degree murder under the FELONY-MURDER RULE. During the penalty phase, the jury rejected the prosecution's arguments for capital punishment, instead sentencing Jones to life in prison.

When Jones appealed his conviction, the North Carolina Supreme Court did not review his sentence under an Eighth Amendment analysis. Rather, the state's high court ruled that any sentence that Jones might have received for first-degree murder would not have been justified, because a first-degree murder charge can only be supported by proof that the defendant possessed a "specific intent" to commit the crime. At a minimum, the court said, proof of SPECIFIC INTENT requires evidence that the defendant had "an actual intent to undertake the conduct resulting in death; thus, even if the killing itself was not intended, the actual intent to torture, poison, starve, or imprison the victim must be present … for the killing to qualify as first-degree murder." The North Carolina Supreme Court rejected the state's argument that specific intent could be "implied" from the defendant's reckless conduct. State v. Jones, 538 S.E. 2d 917 (N.C. 2000). No state court since State v. Jones has successfully prosecuted a defendant for first-degree murder arising out of a drunk-driving-related offense.