Campbell v. State

• Decision Date: 01 June 1915
• Docket Number: 186
• Parties: CAMPBELL v. STATE.
• Court: Alabama Court of Appeals

69 So. 322

13 Ala.App. 70

CAMPBELL v. STATE.

No. 186

Court of Appeals of Alabama

June 1, 1915

Appeal from Circuit Court, Chambers County; S.L. Brower, Judge.

Raymond Campbell was convicted of manslaughter in the first degree and he appeals. Affirmed.

The facts sufficiently appear. The following charges were refused the defendant:

(1) If, after considering the evidence in this case, the jury have a reasonable doubt as to whether the killing of Corley was the result of an accident, you should find the defendant not guilty.

(2) If the jury believe from the evidence that the killing of Corley was the result of an accident, you should find the defendant not guilty.

(3) Same as 1.

(4) Before the jury can convict the defendant, each member of the jury must be convinced by the evidence beyond a reasonable doubt that the defendant intentionally killed Corley.

(8) If the jury believe that the gun was accidentally discharged and killed Corley, you should find the defendant not guilty.

(9) If the evidence fails to show any motive for the defendant to kill Corley, and if from such absence of proof of motive the jury has a reasonable doubt of the guilt of the defendant, they should find him not guilty.

(10) If the jury have a reasonable doubt of the guilt of the defendant growing out of any part of the evidence, you should find the defendant not guilty.

(12) Flight of the defendant in a criminal case may or may not be considered as a circumstance tending to prove guilt depending on the motive which prompted it, whether a consciousness of guilt, and a pending apprehension of being brought to justice caused the flight, or whether it was caused from some other or more innocent motive, and the jury may look to the fact that he left under the instructions and command of his father.

(14) You are not selected and placed in the jury box to find a verdict of guilt, but to try this case under the evidence and the law as layed down by the court for your guidance, and if the evidence in this case thus applied fails to convince you beyond a reasonable doubt, then it is your sworn duty to acquit the defendant.

(8A) Unless the jury believe from the evidence that at the time the defendant shot Corley, the defendant was pointing or aiming the gun at Corley, they cannot find the defendant guilty of murder or manslaughter in either degree.

Strother Hines & Fuller, of La Fayette, for appellant.

W.L Martin, Atty. Gen., and J.P. Mudd, Asst. Atty. Gen., for the State.

THOMAS J.

The appellant, as defendant below, was indicted for the murder of one Eugene Corley, and was convicted of manslaughter in the first degree, and given a sentence of five years.

It appears that on the night of the homicide, and about half an hour prior thereto, the deceased and the defendant, who were first cousins and on the friendliest of terms, were, together with two brothers of defendant and one Walton, at the home of a relative of defendant and deceased, where they all indulged, more or less, in "drinking" and amusements; that the defendant in good humor and friendly to all left this home prior to the others, saying as he left that he was going over to his grandfather's and spend the night, which was some distance up the road. He stopped, however, en route at the house of a negro woman, and, finding her door not latched, pushed it open and went inside, where the woman and her girls were in bed. The woman, who did not know or could not tell who the defendant was, came out of the house and sent word by a negro man who was passing the road to Mr. Campbell (at whose home the defendant had shortly before left his companions) to come down and get a "white man" out of her house. These companions, including deceased, proceeded with Mr. Campbell immediately to the woman's house, not knowing that defendant was the person within who had caused the alarm. As they approached the house the defendant from within called out aloud three times, "Halt!" and just as the advancing parties were reaching the house, he (defendant) took up a single-barrel shotgun then in the house, and, according to the state's witnesses, stuck the muzzle through the crack of the door, which was partially open, and fired just as deceased was walking up the steps, producing the wound from which the latter died. Defendant and his witnesses claim that the shooting was accidental; that defendant had no purpose in seizing the gun to shoot any one, and was not pointing it at any one, but merely had it in his hands, when deceased on reaching the door grabbed it, and that defendant, in pulling it back, accidentally struck the door facing with the hammer of the gun, leaving a scar on the door facing and causing the gun to discharge.

Defendant, after the shooting, assisted in ministering to deceased, who expired in a few moments, but defendant made no explanation at the time as to who did the shooting or as to how it occurred. Subsequently, and on the same evening, defendant took the father of deceased, who had come to the scene of the killing, home in defendant's buggy, and on the way home explained, as defendant admitted on the stand, to the father, who then did not know who killed deceased or how it occurred, that he (defendant) likewise did not know who did the shooting, since, he said, it happened while he (defendant) was coming up to the house with the other boys and before he reached it. Other persons who were not present at the killing testified that defendant told them that night that a negro killed deceased. The next day the defendant attended the funeral of deceased, and the following day he, who was a youth of 19 years, left the state, not of his own volition, however, as the undisputed evidence shows, but at the solicitation of his father, who furnished him the money and advised him to leave until the matter could be looked into further.

The court sustained an objection by the solicitor to the following question propounded by defendant's counsel to one of the state's witnesses on cross-examination: "Is it not a fact that they [meaning defendant and deceased] appeared to be the very best of friends all the time?" There was no injury, if error, in sustaining the objection to the question, because the witness had already stated that they were cousins, and "were friendly, and that there was no kind of trouble or feeling between them," and because other witnesses, both for the state and for the defendant, subsequently stated practically and in effect the same thing, and there was no dispute whatever but what defendant and deceased were on the best of terms.

On cross-examination, after a witness for the state had testified, without objection from the solicitor that defendant attended the funeral of deceased, the defendant's counsel sought to draw out the further fact, to which the solicitor objected, that defendant attended that funeral in company with the sisters of deceased. The court committed no error in sustaining the solicitor's objection. The fact, if it be a fact, that defendant attended the funeral of deceased, and did so in company with the sisters of deceased, constituted no part of...