State v. Cummings

MARTIN, Justice.

Defendant assigns error to both the guilt phase and the sentencing phase of his capital trial. Having carefully reviewed the entire record and each of defendant’s arguments, we find no error in either phase and decline to disturb defendant’s conviction and sentence.

The state’s evidence tended to show the following: On 16 August 1986 the body of Jesse Ward, aged seventy-seven, was discovered in the kitchen of his Robeson County home. The victim had spent the previous day helping his brother-in-law, Henry Powell, fix a lawn mower and had planned to return to Powell’s home on the…