GENERAL ASSEMBLY OF NORTH CAROLINA
SESSION 2007
HOUSE BILL 784
RATIFIED BILL
AN ACT to amend the first degree murder statute to conform with the united states supreme court ruling in roper v. simmons that the execution of a defendant who was under eighteen years of age at the time of the murder is unconstitutional as recommended by the House interim study committee on capital punishment.
The General Assembly of North Carolina enacts:
SECTION 1. G.S. 14‑17 reads as rewritten:
"§ 14‑17. Murder in the first and second degree defined; punishment.
A murder which shall be
perpetrated by means of a nuclear, biological, or chemical weapon of mass
destruction as defined in G.S. 14‑288.21, poison, lying in wait,
imprisonment, starving, torture, or by any other kind of willful, deliberate,
and premeditated killing, or which shall be committed in the perpetration or
attempted perpetration of any arson, rape or a sex offense, robbery,
kidnapping, burglary, or other felony committed or attempted with the use of a
deadly weapon shall be deemed to be murder in the first degree, a Class A felony,
and any person who commits such murder shall be punished with death or
imprisonment in the State's prison for life without parole as the court shall
determine pursuant to G.S. 15A‑2000, except that any such person who
was under 1718 years of age at the time of the murder shall be
punished with imprisonment in the State's prison for life without parole. Provided,
however, any person under the age of 17 who commits murder in the first degree
while serving a prison sentence imposed for a prior murder or while on escape
from a prison sentence imposed for a prior murder shall be punished with death
or imprisonment in the State's prison for life without parole as the court
shall determine pursuant to G.S. 15A‑2000. All other kinds of
murder, including that which shall be proximately caused by the unlawful
distribution of opium or any synthetic or natural salt, compound, derivative,
or preparation of opium, or cocaine or other substance described in G.S. 90‑90(1)d.,
or methamphetamine, when the ingestion of such substance causes the death of
the user, shall be deemed murder in the second degree, and any person who
commits such murder shall be punished as a Class B2 felon."
SECTION 2. This act is effective when it becomes law.
In the General Assembly read three times and ratified this the 7th day of June, 2007.
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Beverly E. Perdue
President of the Senate
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Joe Hackney
Speaker of the House of Representatives
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Michael F. Easley
Governor
Approved __________.m. this ______________ day of ___________________, 2007