my friend let his neighbor install an after market stereo in his 1982 dodge ram it is 4x4 with a 318 engine and after he installed the cd player and hooked the battery back up a wire started smoking on the driver side and the cd player does not work and the truck will start for a split second but then dies immediately every time. I'm thinking his neighbor might have cut into a ground wire because he didn't use a wire harness but I'm not for sure

First, can you tell what was burning up? Hopefully, it was the stereo harness and not the truck's harness, etc.
Go back and remove the entire stereo wiring and restore the truck to original (if possible) and try running the engine again.

Sounds like the ign in line fuse