Criminal Law Keyed to Dressler
State v. Norman
ProfessorScott Caron
CaseCast™ – "What you need to know"
Facts
Mr. Norman and the Defendant had been married twenty-five years and Mr. Norman had been beating the Defendant since about five years after they were married. Over the course of the marriage, the abuse had gotten so severe that the defense psychologist characterized it as “torture, degradation, and reduction to an animal level of existence, where all behavior was marked purely by survival…” The Defendant was in constant fear of Mr. Norman and she did not seek help for fear of serious reprisal by Mr. Norman, possibly including death. On the day of the killing, Mr. Norman had made the Defendant sleep on the floor until one of the couple’s daughters asked if the Defendant could watch her baby. When the baby began to cry, the Defendant took the child to her mother’s house. At her mother’s house, the Defendant found a gun, took it back to her home and shot Mr. Norman. The Court of Appeals of North Carolina ordered a new trial, citing as error the trial court’s refusal to submit a possible verdict of acquittal by reason of self-defense.
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