Bowie v. Commonwealth
| Decision Date | 08 October 1945 |
| Citation | 35 S.E.2d 345,184 Va. 381 |
| Court | Virginia Supreme Court |
| Parties | BOWIE. v. COMMONWEALTH. |
Error to Circuit Court, Spotsylvania County; Leon M. Bazile, Judge.
John Earl Bowie was convicted of involuntary manslaughter and he brings error.
Affirmed.
Before CAMPBELL, C. J., and HOLT, HUDGINS, GREGORY, BROWNING, EGGLESTON, and SPRATLEY, JJ.
William W. Butzner and DuVal. Q. Hicks, both of Fredericksburg, for plaintiff in error.
Abram P. Saples, Atty. Gen, and M. Ray Doubles, Asst. Atty. Gen, for Commonwealth.
The facts in this case present a sordid story of an illicit amour between a married man and a single woman, with all of the implications attached to such a relation. The man, John Earl Bowie, was indicted for the murder of the woman, Clara Olivia Spencer. On this indictment he was tried and the jury found him guilty of involuntary manslaughter, and fixed his punishment at five years in the penitentiary.
At the conclusion of the Commonwealth's evidence, the defendant moved to strike it on the ground that the corpus delicti had not been proven, particularly, in that it failed to show that the death of Miss Spencer was caused by a criminal agency. The defendant excepted to the action of the court in overruling his motion and rested his case without testifying or offering any evidence. Upon the return of the jury's verdict, he moved the court to set it aside upon the ground above stated and for misdirection of the jury by the court. After argument of counsel, this motion was overruled and judgment was entered in accordance with the verdict.
There are a number of assignments of error; but all of them are covered by the contention of the defendant that the evidence failed to establish a criminal agency as the means of the death of Miss Spencer, and, that therefore, the corpus delicti was not proven.
The deceased, Clara Olivia Spencer, was, on the date of her death, an unmarried girl, nineteen years of age. She lived with her parents at their home in Fredericksburg, Virginia. The defendant, Bowie, is a married man, having a wife and three children. He has the appearance of being in his late twenties. He lived with his wife and children outside Fredericksburg, in Stafford county, Virginia, and owned and operated a shoe repair shop in Quantico, Virginia, about 20 miles north of Fredericksburg.
When Miss Spencer was about sixteen years of age, she became an employee of the defendant, working in his shoe shop. During this period, the defendant began to pay constant personal attention to her, and assumed a proprietary control over her. He denied her the privilege of association with other men. If she displeased him, he reprimanded her, and on several occasions he slapped or struck her. He gave her presents of jewelry from time to time.
About three months before her death, she went out with Raymond Fisher, an eighteen-year-old youth, and shortly thereafter, the defendant showed Fisher some bloody rags and said something to him about having beaten the deceased until her nose bled.
The defendant would drive, or escort by other means of transportation, Miss Spencer from Fredericksburg to and from her work and return with her each night. According to Miss Ellen Hockaday, who roomed at the decedent's home, he visited Miss Spencer "pretty much every night." For six or seven weeks preceding her death, he came to see her from two to four times a week, and frequently took her out. He made himself at home in her residence, taking some of his meals there and conducting himself as if he were a member of her family.
On Saturday, September 9, 1944, the day before the tragedy, Miss Spencer kept an engagement with a young man, Earl Embry, leaving her home at about 7 p.m., and returning from a drive with him to Washington, D. C, at an early hour Sunday morning. Late that evening, the defendant went to the home of Miss Spencer and inquired for her. Not finding her there, he went out in search of her, inquiring for her at a place called "Baker's, " on Highway Route 1, out of Fredericksburg. Not finding her there, at about 10:30 or 11 o'clock, p.m., he got in a car with R. M. Johnson and two girls who roomed at Miss Spencer's home, and drove with them to a place called "Aquia Tavern, " in Stafford county, still looking for Miss Spencer. During the course of this drive, he complained to one of the girls, Miss Hockaday, that Miss Spencer had worn a pair of shoes out of his shop that belonged to some other person, and stated that if he caught her out with somebody else, "he would see that she would not go out with anybody else." When they returned to Fredericksburg, the defendant got out of the car near the Spencer home, and the remaining members of the party drove off. The defendant then went back to her home and inquired for her again and was told she was at the movies. He replied, "She is not at the movies now." He departed, but returned again to her home about midnight and stood in the hall, part of the time behind the front door, until approximately 2 o'clock a.m. waiting for her. Members of the household tried to get him to leave; but he refused to do so. Finally after everyone in the house had retired, he left. Miss Spencer had not then returned from Washington.
On Sunday morning, September 10, 1944, and shortly after Miss Spencer's mother had begun her morning's housework, the defendant appeared at the house, greeted Mrs. Spencer, and turned on the radio. Mrs. Spencer then went into the room occupied by her daughter and Ellen Hockaday, and woke up her daughter, who got up and went in to see the defendant. Later, Miss Spencer came into the kitchen where her mother and Miss Alley, another roomer in the house, were, and whispered to her mother that she had been out the previous night with Embry. The defend ant followed her in the kitchen and inquired "What are you whispering about?"
About 10 o'clock a.m., Miss Spencer got in the automobile of the accused and he drove off with her. Shortly thereafter, as they were driving west on Route 3, in Spotsylvania county, he approached a car being driven in same direction by Sergeant Steve A. Dyszkiewicz, a resident of Fredericksburg for two years, who was accompanied by his wife and infant child. Sergeant Dyszkiewicz testified that when the approaching car was about 30 feet behind him, he looked in the rear vision mirror of his car to see if it desired to pass. Both cars were then traveling between 25 and 30 miles an hour. As he looked, he saw the right-hand door of the defendant's car open, and what appeared to be a girl getting out on the running board of the defendant's car and putting one foot on the highway; that as the girl left the car the defendant increased his speed and pulled to the left to pass the car in front of him; and that he paid attention to the car and not to the body of Miss Spencer, which was thrown from the moving car to the highway. The sergeant holloed at the defendant as his car passed him. Receiving no attention from his calls, he blew his horn two or three times, and finally the defendant stopped his car about 346 feet up the road from where the body of the girl lay in the road. Both men got out of their cars and what then took place is described in the testimony of the sergeant, as follows:
The car in which the defendant and Miss Spencer were traveling was a 1931 model Plymouth coupe. Its doors are hinged in front and open in the rear, swinging outward towards the front. The defendant drove the car and Miss Spencer sat beside him on his right. The car was viewed by the jury. Its seat is only wide enough to accommodate two persons, with a very slight space between them.
The road was a two-lane, hard-surfaced highway. The tragedy occurred in front of the home of Mrs. Lydia Edwards. Immediately preceding its happening, Mrs. Edwards, who was on her back porch, heard a scream that "sounded as if someone was hurt or frightened, " which came from the direction of the road. Mrs. Edwards testified that it was not a man's voice she heard. She rushed into her house and, finding her child safe, went out to the road. There she saw a man going towards the body of the girl, which was in the road. Directly opposite the driveway to another house, which is across the road from the Edwards' house, there were marks on the pavement which showed where the deceased's clothing had rubbed very hard against the tarvia of the road surface. About three feet from the center of the white line in the middle of the highway, a distance of 46 feet from the marks of the clothing in the road, there was a pool of blood on the surface of the road. Drops of blood from the pool were found up the road for a distance of 346 feet, the distance the defendant's car stopped from the point where the girl's body came to rest in the toad.
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