## Facts

- Two white men, Kenneth Mizell and Brickhouse, spent the evening drinking and later encountered enslaved men Caesar and Dick near a storehouse at night.
- Brickhouse claimed to be a patroller, struck Caesar and Dick with a board, and later assaulted Dick with repeated fist blows.
- A third enslaved man, Charles, arrived; Brickhouse seized him and demanded a whip to whip Charles, then released Charles and resumed attacking Dick.
- During the beating, Caesar took a fence rail and struck Brickhouse on the head; the rail broke, and Caesar then struck Mizell.
- Caesar and Dick fled; Mizell died the next day from his injuries.
- At trial, the judge instructed that the assault by Mizell and Brickhouse was an “ordinary assault” and could not constitute legal provocation to reduce murder to manslaughter.
- The jury convicted Caesar of murder.

## Issues

1. Whether an assault and battery by drunken white men upon enslaved men, given the surrounding circumstances, could legally constitute adequate provocation to mitigate a resulting homicide from murder to manslaughter.
2. Whether the trial court erred by instructing, as a matter of law, that the assault was merely “ordinary” and could not extenuate the homicide.

## Decision

- The Supreme Court of North Carolina reversed the murder conviction and ordered a new trial.
- The court held that the circumstances of the assault could legally amount to adequate provocation, and the trial judge erred by characterizing it as “ordinary” in a manner that effectively foreclosed manslaughter mitigation.
- The court indicated that whether the assault was sufficiently aggravated to produce heat of passion was for the jury to assess under proper instructions.

## Legal Principles

- Adequate provocation depends on attending circumstances (including time, place, manner, and surrounding context), not solely on the degree of force or the instrument used.
- An aggravated assault and battery, even without a deadly weapon, may generate heat of passion that rebuts malice and can reduce a homicide from murder to manslaughter.
- A trial court may not remove the provocation/mitigation question from the jury by categorically labeling an assault “ordinary” when the evidence could support a finding of aggravation.
- In homicide cases involving enslaved defendants and white victims, the law does not impose a categorical bar on manslaughter mitigation where the defendant acted in immediate response to an aggravated assault.

## Conclusion

The court reversed Caesar’s murder conviction because the trial court’s instruction improperly treated the assault on the enslaved men as legally insufficient provocation, despite circumstances that could support a jury finding of an aggravated assault producing heat of passion and mitigating the offense to manslaughter.


State v. Caesar, 31 N.C. 391 (N.C. 1849)