Boyd v. State
| Decision Date | 06 February 1947 |
| Docket Number | 15727. |
| Citation | 41 S.E.2d 309,201 Ga. 853 |
| Parties | BOYD v. STATE. |
| Court | Georgia Supreme Court |
Mose Boyd was jointly indicted with Henry Patterson for the offense of murder in cutting and stabbing Bill Johnson with certain pocket knives and inflicting a mortal wound upon him. Henry Patterson was tried, convicted with a recommendation of mercy, and sentenced to life imprisonment. At a succeeding term of court, Mose Boyd was tried, convicted with a recommendation of mercy, and sentenced to life imprisonment. The evidence, briefly stated, showed the following facts: On the night of the homicide, Boyd and Paterson had been riding around in an automobile in Louisville, Georgia, with other companions. After Patterson had left the car and the rest were approaching the house of Louise Givins, where the homicide subsequently occurred Patterson was seen nearby. On arrival of the party at the house of Louise Givens, Bill Johnson was on the porch. Louise Givins went into her house and was soon followed by Mose Boyd, Bill Johnson, Henry Patterson, and others. Shortly after entering, Bill Johnson slapped Louise Givins. The defendant and Bill Johnson began pulling at this woman, and after she managed to get away from them the two gegan to struggle and fight. Henry Patterson pulled the deceased loose from the defendant, and then he and the defendant crowded the deceased from the front room through a door into a back room into darkness. Before the three had passed through the door Henry Patterson was seen with a raised knife, and after they had entered the dark back room, witnesses heard noises in that room indicating that the fight was continuing there. Blood on the door and on the wall indicated that the deceased had been severely cut at or near this door leading from the front room to the back room. From testimony of a physician who later examined the body of the deceased, as to the probability of blood spurting from a fatal wound of the deceased, it was inferable that the blood on the door and on the wall came from a wound of the deceased while he and the other two were at or near the door in their encounter. A trail of blood on the floor indicated that the deceased after being mortally wounded, went out a back door to a nearby house where, according to testimony, he fell upon the floor of that house and soon thereafter died. Testimony of the examining physician showed that the deceased had been cut and stabbed in five places, one wound being a stab wound in the breast and another being a large cut in the neck severing the jugular vein. This wound in the neck was according to the physician, sufficient to produce death. Eddie Hargrove testified that shortly after he left the premises he was overtaken by the defendant and rode with him to his house, less than a mile from the home of Louise Givins, where he left the automobile of the defendant and walked to his own home; and that the defendant did not say a word about what had happened in the back room but just said: Cassie Patterson, wife of Henry Patterson, testified that the defendant and Eddie Hargrove came by her house, and 'Mose Boyd told me he had cut Bill Johnson when he came in the house, and he says, 'There goes the law in the quarter now,' and he said 'I am going back up there, and if he starts anything else I'm going to kill him.'' She also testified that Henry Patterson had been convicted and given a life sentence and was serving it in the Reidsville prison. It further appeared that on the night of the homicide the sheriff made an effort to apprehend the defendant, Mose Boyd, but was unable to do so, and never obtained his custody until he was caught in New York City by the F. B. I.
The defendant made a statement, in substance as follows: After the deceased had slapped Louise Givins several times and had asked, 'Who don't like it?' and no one answered the deceased approached the defendant and asked if he didn't like it. The defendant said, 'This woman ain't nothing to me.' The deceased then grabbed the defendant by the collar and reached in his bosom as if to get a pistol. He usually carried a pistol. The defendant tried to get away, the deceased struck him, and they 'tied up fighting.' Henry Paterson ran in the room and grabbed the deceased loose from the defendant. By that time Eddie Hargrove entered the door. Louise Givins ran out the door. Robert Heath ran out the door, knocking the lamp from the dresser. The defendant then ran out the door, leaving Henry Patterson, the deceased, and Eddie Hargrove in the room. The defendant went to his car, and about a hundred yards away was joined by Eddie Hargrove and Robert Heath. Eddie Hargrove said that he had left the house just behind the defendant, who was not hurt, and that he did not know about Henry Patterson. The defendant later learned from Shine Prosser that the deceased had been killed. The defendant took his wife and children to his cousin's and was told that, since the defendant had been living there only about six weeks, 'they are going to lay it all on you because you have just moved out here.' On his way back the defendant saw Sheriff Hubbard, and hid in a cotton field while the sheriff talked to his wife and children. The deceased's father was heard to say that the defendant killed the deceased and should be hung. As the defendant returned home on foot, he heard Sheriff Hubbard talking to Eddie Hargrove, who told the sheriff that the defendant did the cutting. This was untrue. Neither he nor the deceased had a knife. Henry Patterson was...
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Hancock v. State
...531; Howard v. State, 148 Ga.App. 598, 599-600(5), 251 S.E.2d 829; Weaver v. State, 135 Ga. 317(2), 320, 69 S.E. 488; Boyd v. State, 201 Ga. 853(2), 41 S.E.2d 309. Accord, Germany v. State, 235 Ga. 836, 840-844(2), 221 S.E.2d Here the defendants made a specific written request to charge the......
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Howard v. State, 56538
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