Campbell v. State

• Decision Date: 14 October 1947
• Docket Number: 15948.
• Citation: 44 S.E.2d 903,202 Ga. 705
• Parties: CAMPBELL v. STATE.
• Court: Georgia Supreme Court

44 S.E.2d 903

202 Ga. 705

CAMPBELL v. STATE.

No. 15948.

Supreme Court of Georgia

October 14, 1947

Remer Denmark, of Sylvania, and John W. Maddox and W. T. Maddox, both of Rome, for plaintiff in error.

E J. Clower, Sol. Gen., of Rome, G. W. Langford, of La Fayette T. J. Espy, Jr., of Summerville, Eugene Cook, Atty. Gen., and Mary B. Rogers, of Atlanta, for defendant in error.

Syllabus Opinion by the Court.

JENKINS Chief Justice.

1. 'After the fact of conspiracy shall be proved, the declarations by any one of the conspirators during the pendency of the criminal project shall be admissible against all.' Code, § 38-306.

(a) In the instant case, the evidence shows that the defendant and four other convicts overpowered the guards at a public-work camp and took their guns, and that while the defendant was absent the other escaping convicts posted a lookout and held the guards prisoner until the defendant returned some ten to fifteen minutes later with an automobile and all of them got into it and escaped. It is further shown that the homicide occurred on a road adjacent to the work camp when the defendant stopped an automobile, shot the driver, and took his car. Grounds 1 and 2 of the amended motion for new trial assign error on the admission in evidence of that portion of the testimony of two named guards, relating to the acts and declarations of such other convicts which took place in the absence of the defendant over the objection that it was irrelevant and prejudicial to the defendant, who alone was being tried on the charge of murder.

The evidence objected to was sufficient to establish the fact of conspiracy to escape from the work camp, and while it is true that the defendant was not being tried for the escape, nevertheless, since the homicide occurred in pursuance of such conspiracy, the evidence was admissible against the defendant, not only as relating to the acts and declarations of conspirators during the pendency of a criminal project, but also as being illustrative of the defendant's motive for arming himself and for procuring the automobile in which act the homicide occurred. See, in this connection, Boone v. State, 145 Ga. 37, 39, 88 S.E. 558; Wall v. State, 126 Ga. 86, 54 S.E. 815; Wall v. State, 153 Ga. 309, 316, 112 S.E. 142. It follows, therefore, that the trial court did not err in admitting such testimony in evidence, and the above assignments of error are without merit.

2. 'When all of the evidence introduced on the trial of a criminal case strongly and decidedly tended to show that the offense was committed in the county where the trial was had, and there was no evidence warranting even a bare conjecture that it was committed elsewhere, it will be held that the venue was sufficiently proved.' Womble v. State, 107 Ga. 666(3), 33 S.E. 630; Johnson v. State, 62 Ga. 299; Smiley v. State, 66 Ga. 754; Lee v. State, 176 Ga. 215, 218, 167 S.E. 507.

(a) Ground 3 of the amended motion for new trial complains that the State did not establish venue of the homicide. A summary of the evidence bearing on this question is as follows: The defendant made this statement: 'Well, I went over the hill and went down to the road there and flagged a car, and he stopped and I opened the front door of the car and took my pistol out of my pocket and put it down by the side of my leg, and I told him I had escaped from the rock quarry and that I wanted his car. I had one foot up on the running board of the car, and he started to drive off, and when he pulled off the car jerked and I tried to catch hold of the window of the door of the car and the gun went off, and after the gun went off he went about that far and stopped (indicating) and said, 'What you mean?' and I told him to get out and let me have his car, and he slid out under the wheel and I caught him by the shoulder and arm and I did not know he was shot.' Norman Lambert testified for the State: 'I was driving that bread truck down the Black Bluff Road at about 11:30. I went by the stockade. Between the stockade and fifty to seventy-five yards of beyond it, I saw somebody in the road. There was a car coming up the road and there was a colored boy standing there with a rag in his hand flagging it and the car rolled up to him and stopped. I was on top of the hill and by the time I got to the car it was in a dead stop. Mr. Chandler (the deceased) was driving that car. I knew him before his death. His car was a forty-model Oldsmobile. * * * It was down below the dynamite house. There had been some new gravel put in the road along there. In State's exhibit (5) I see the little dynamite house. That is the one I referred to in my testimony. I do not see the point approximately where the car was stopped. It would be over on around the curve from here, 150 to 200 yards from the dynamite house. There was some new gravel around this curve and the car was stopped right on the gravel.' There was other evidence that the body of the deceased was found 10 or 15 feet from the dynamite house above referred to. J. E Rogers, one of the guards at the rock quarry, in testifying for the State, identified from photographs the location of the stockade, the rock quarry, and the dynamite house with reference to the Black Bluff Road which runs past these objects. He further...