Cagle v. State

• Decision Date: 28 November 1973
• Parties: Sheridan Ray CAGLE, Plaintiff in Error, v. STATE of Tennessee, Defendant in Error.
• Court: Tennessee Court of Criminal Appeals

Page 121

507 S.W.2d 121

73 A.L.R.3d 891

Sheridan Ray CAGLE, Plaintiff in Error, v. STATE of Tennessee, Defendant in Error.

Court of Criminal Appeals of Tennessee.

Nov. 28, 1973.

Certiorari Denied by Supreme Court March 18, 1974.

Fred L. Myers, Newport, for plaintiff in error.

David M. Pack, Atty. Gen., Bart Durham, Asst. Atty. Gen., Nashville, Heiskell H. Winstead, Dist. Atty. Gen., Rogersville, for defendant in error.

OPINION

OLIVER, Judge.

Represented by retained counsel, Cagle has duly perfected an appeal in the nature of a writ of error to this Court contesting his Hamblen County Criminal Court first degree murder conviction, for which he was sentenced to imprisonment in the penitentiary for 99 years.

The defendant's first two Assignments of Error raise the usual assault upon the sufficiency of the evidence to warrant and support the verdict of the jury. The principles to which we must adhere in reviewing a record when such Assignments are advanced have been enunciated so very many times by our Supreme Court and this Court that they are now common knowledge in the legal profession. The jury's verdict of guilt, approved by the trial judge, strips the defendant of the presumption of innocence, with which the law clothed him throughout his trial, and he stands before this Court presumed to be guilty and he has the burden here of demonstrating that the evidence preponderates against the verdict and in favor of his innocence. The verdict so approved accredits the testimony of the prosecution witnesses and establishes the State's theory of the case. We may review the evidence only to determine whether it preponderates against the verdict, and in doing so we are required to take the verdict as having established the credibility of the State's witnesses. The verdict may not be overturned on the facts unless the evidence clearly preponderates against it and in favor of the innocence of the accused. Jamison v. State, 220 Tenn. 280, 416 S.W.2d 768; Webster v. State, 1 Tenn.Cr.App. 1, 425 S.W.2d 799; Hancock v. State, 1 Tenn.Cr.App. 116, 430 S.W.2d 892; Morelock v. State, 3 Tenn.Cr.App. 292, 460 S.W.2d 861; Chadwick v. State, 1 Tenn.Cr.App. 72, 429 S.W.2d 135; Phillips v. State, 2 Tenn.Cr.App. 609, 455 S.W.2d 637.

We summarize the material evidence. About 10:20 a.m. July 20, 1972, the deceased Mrs. Edith Briggs, telephoned her husband Leonard at the television shop in Morristown where he worked. She told him that the defendant, who was Mr. Briggs' brother-in-law, had called her and stated that his car was disabled at the David Greene Bridge near the Cherokee Lake and he and his nephew and his wife were stranded and asked her for assistance.

About 1:00 p.m. the same day, the defendant and his wife and nephew, whom they were raising, went to the television shop and the defendant asked Mr. Briggs about borrowing a fishing rod. Briggs asked the defendant where Mrs. Briggs was, and the defendant said that he had not seen or talked with her that day. Briggs then told the defendant about the telephone conversation with his wife that morning, but the defendant denied calling her.

After calling his home but receiving no answer, Briggs and the defendant and the latter's family went to the Briggs' home in the defendant's car, but neither Mrs. Briggs nor their Mustang automobile was there. The defendant then drove them to the lake searching for her. As they recrossed the David Greene Bridge, located in Hamblen County, the defendant called attention to a Mustang parked on their right in some bushes near the end of the bridge. Briggs, who was sitting on the passenger's side in the defendant's car, testified that he could see a car but could not identify the make.

The defendant drove to the Mustang, which was the Briggs' car, and which was parked in a parking area 15 to 20 feet from the lake bluff. The door on the driver's side was partially open. They began searching for Mrs. Briggs, and while doing so the defendant asked Briggs if Mrs. Briggs had her pocketbook with her. When Briggs answered affirmatively, the defendant said, 'Is this it down here?' Her pocketbook was hanging on a shrub or bush out in the water from where the car was parked, and some of her personal effects were scattered along the bank.

In the meantime, the defendant's wife had gone to the nearby Moose Lodge to call the TV shop and the Briggs' home to see whether Mrs. Briggs had returned. After the pocketbook was found, Briggs ran to the Moose Lodge and called the police. When they returned to the scene, Briggs became frantic and started to dive into the water to look for his wife. His sister, the defendant's wife, told the defendant to stop him. Grabbing him, the defendant said that Mrs. Briggs was not down there, that something probably happened to her on the other side of the lake, and that 'they' just brought her car over there.

That night, Officer Charles Long, who was investigating the disappearance of Mrs. Briggs, checked out a note he had received the day before concerning a car parked in the Drinnen Heights Subdivision, where the Briggs lived. In the forenoon of July 18th and July 19th two men working in a field nearby, which one of them owned, saw a car park on a street near the subdivision and saw the driver walk through the field toward the back of the Briggs' home. One of the men took the license number of the car and reported it to the police.

As a result of his investigation, on July 21st, after advision him of his constitutional rights, Officer Long questioned the defendant. He told Long that the last time he saw Mrs. Briggs was a week before her disappearance; that he never went out with her and was not in love with her; that he parked his car in Drinnen Heights in order to get some sleep and to get away from his wife, and that the reason he was walking through the field was to pick blackberries.

Pursuing his investigation, Officer Long went to the area where the car was supposedly parked and found a newly-formed path from that spot to the rear of the Briggs' home. Inspecting the Briggs' basement, he found that some of the electric fuses had been removed from the fuse box, found some pieces of cloth in a box on a shelf behind some paint cans, and particles of grass and a table leg on the pool table. Laboratory examination revealed that one piece of the cloth found in the basement and the pieces found at the quarry, where the deceased's body was discovered later, were at one time a single fabric and probably came from the same dress.

The next day Officer Long again questioned the defendant who then told him that he went to the Briggs' home, entering at the basement, because Mrs. Briggs was supposed to arrange a date for him with Elizabeth Corum, and that, not seeing either of the women, he laid down on the pool table and went to sleep; that on July 19th he repeated the same routine, but this time he could hear only Mrs. Briggs moving around upstairs; that on the morning of July 20th he went to three different places (Sky City, Gibson's and the Panther Creek area) looking for a friend named Mike Smith and then went to the Morristown-Hamblen Hospital; and that after returning home he showered and dressed and took his family to the television shop.

About 6:30 p.m. the same day, the defendant was question by TBI Agent Steve Watson in the presence of Officers Long and Brock. The defendant told Watson that on the morning of July 18th he went to the Drinnen Heights Subdivision, parked his car away from the Briggs' home and entered through the basement; that Mrs. Briggs was supposed to arrange a date for him with Elizabeth Corum; that he could hear the two women upstairs talking and concluded that Mrs. Briggs had not told Miss Corum about the date; that he remained in the basement, played pool and took a leg off of an end table, thinking about refinishing it; that he remained there until 3:00 p.m.; that the next morning, parking his car in the same place, he again entered the basement of the Briggs' home for the purpose of seeing Miss Corum; that he heard Mrs. Briggs moving around upstairs and removed some fuses from the fuse box, hoping that would cause her to come to the basement; that he heard Mr. Briggs come home for lunch and heard a discussion between the two of them about the television needing repairing; that he remained there until about 2:00 or 3:00 p.m.; that on July 20th he left home around 8:00 a.m., stopped at a service station, went to Sky City, then to the Five Points area, then to Snowden's car lot where he stopped and looked at a car, then went down the Panther Creek Road trying to locate a friend whom he did not name and could not find; that he then went to Morristown to locate the doctor who had treated him for a hand injury in order to get an absence excuse to present to his employer; that he then returned home around noon, changed clothes, and he and his wife and nephew went back to the hospital to see if they could find the doctor; that they next went to the TV shop about 1:00 p.m. and he asked Mr. Briggs about borrowing some fishing roads; that Briggs asked him if he had seen the deceased, and that he replied he had not; that Briggs said the deceased had called him and said she was going to the lake to pick up the defendant and his wife, who had had car trouble; that he replied he had not seen or called her; that, driving his own car, he and his wife and nephew and Mr. Briggs went to search for the deceased; that, not finding her at home, at Briggs' request they went to the lake searching for the deceased, and drove across the David Greene Bridge into Grainger County; that as they were recrossing that bridge enroute back to Morristown he saw what looked like a car down under the righthand side of the bridge on the Hamblen County side, which turned out to be the Briggs' car, and that they found Mrs. Briggs' purse floating in the water and some of its contents scattered along the bank.

During this same...