## Facts

- Max Doyle Perkins and Robert Eugene McCorkle were jointly indicted in Mecklenburg County, North Carolina, for a “crime against nature” under N.C. Gen. Stat. § 14-177 based on oral copulation with each other.
- McCorkle pleaded *nolo contendere* and received a 5–7 year sentence.
- Perkins pleaded not guilty, was convicted by a jury, and received a 20–30 year prison sentence.
- Perkins sought state post-conviction relief; the petition was denied, and he apparently lacked appointed counsel in that proceeding despite a state statutory provision for appointment.
- Perkins filed a federal habeas petition challenging (1) the statute as unconstitutionally vague, (2) his sentence as cruel and unusual punishment, and (3) the fairness of his trial based on ineffective assistance, including lack of adequate time for counsel to investigate and prepare.
- The federal court found state remedies sufficiently exhausted and reached the merits.

## Issues

1. Whether N.C. Gen. Stat. § 14-177, prohibiting the “crime against nature,” was unconstitutionally vague under due process.
2. Whether Perkins’s 20–30 year sentence violated the Eighth Amendment as cruel and unusual punishment.
3. Whether Perkins was denied effective assistance of counsel, and thus due process, because trial counsel lacked a reasonable opportunity to investigate and prepare.

## Decision

- The court upheld § 14-177 against the vagueness challenge, concluding the term “crime against nature” had an established meaning in North Carolina law that provided adequate notice of prohibited conduct.
- The court rejected the Eighth Amendment challenge, holding that a sentence within statutory limits is generally not cruel and unusual absent exceptional circumstances.
- The court granted habeas relief because Perkins was deprived of effective assistance of counsel where counsel was not afforded a reasonable opportunity to investigate and prepare for trial.
- The court ordered Perkins released within 60 days unless North Carolina retried him within that period.

## Legal Principles

- A criminal statute is not void for vagueness when longstanding judicial construction supplies a sufficiently definite meaning to inform ordinary persons of prohibited conduct.
- A prison term within legislatively authorized limits is ordinarily not unconstitutional under the Eighth Amendment absent exceptional circumstances showing unconstitutional excess.
- The Sixth Amendment requires not only appointment of counsel but a realistic opportunity for counsel to investigate, consult, and prepare; denial of that opportunity can render the trial fundamentally unfair under the Fourteenth Amendment.
- Federal habeas relief may be granted when a state conviction rests on a trial conducted without constitutionally effective assistance of counsel, even if other challenges to the conviction fail.

## Conclusion

The court sustained North Carolina’s “crime against nature” statute and declined to treat Perkins’s within-range sentence as cruel and unusual, but it granted federal habeas relief because the trial process denied Perkins constitutionally effective assistance by depriving counsel of adequate time and opportunity to prepare, requiring release unless the state promptly retried him.


Perkins v. State of North Carolina, 234 F. Supp. 333 (W.D.N.C. 1964)