Carroll v. State

• Decision Date: 11 September 1963
• Citation: 212 Tenn. 464,370 S.W.2d 523,16 McCanless 464
• Parties: , 212 Tenn. 464 William D. CARROLL, Jr. v. STATE of Tennessee.
• Court: Tennessee Supreme Court

Page 523

370 S.W.2d 523

16 McCanless 464, 212 Tenn. 464

William D. CARROLL, Jr. v. STATE of Tennessee.

Supreme Court of Tennessee.

Sept. 11, 1963.

Hugh Stanton, Public Defender, Memphis, Eliot J. Gleszer, Memphis, of counsel, for plaintiff in error.

George F. McCanless, Atty. Gen., Walker T. Tipton, Asst. Atty. Gen., Nashville, for defendant in error.

FELTS, Justice.

Plaintiff in error, referred to as defendant, was indicted and charged with rape of Dolly Carroll. The jury found him guilty as charged and fixed his punishment at death by electrocution. The Trial Judge approved the jury's verdict and entered judgment accordingly.

Defendant brought the case to this Court by an appeal in the nature of a writ of error and has assigned errors, challenging the sufficiency of the evidence to sustain the conviction and seeking a reversal and a new trial upon a number of other grounds.

Evidence for the State was that Dolly Carroll (not related to defendant) was a housewife 17 years of age. She, her husband (L. E. Carroll), 18 years of age, and their one-year-old child lived in an apartment in a housing project on Thomas Street in Hurt Village in Memphis, Tennessee. There were six apartments numbered consecutively from 621-A through 621-F, their apartment being 621-D, which had a kitchen and living room downstairs and two bedrooms and a bathroom upstairs.

In the nighttime, about 3:15 A.M., September 8, 1961, while Dolly Carroll and her husband were asleep in one bedroom, and their baby in another, defendant broke and entered their apartment. He cut the screen, raised the kitchen window, and went upstairs into their bedroom. He turned on the light, she awoke, and saw him crouching beside their bed with the knife in his hand. She asked him who he was and what he was doing there. He put the knife to her throat and told her to be quiet.

Her husband awoke and defendant put the knife to his throat and asked him if he had any money; he replied he had fifty cents. Defendant said: 'Don't get smart with me, punk,' and struck him in the face. He got up and tried to get defendant to leave. Acting as if he were going to leave, defendant threw a $10.00 bill on the bed, said, 'This is for breaking into your house,' and apparently started out, the husband walking with him toward the stairs. As they started down the steps, defendant struck him on the head and 'knocked him out.'

Hearing the 'thud,' Dolly Carroll ran to the top of the steps, saw her husband lying on the steps, 'bleeding all over his face.' Defendant dragged him into their bedroom and laid him on the floor near the bed. Ripping open Mrs. Carroll's blouse, defendant held the knife to her throat, told her to take her clothes off, and get in the bed with him, that if she refused, he would kill her. Through fear, she submitted, and he first had unnatural sexual relations with her--put his mouth to the vagina and held it there for some time.

He then forced her to have sexual intercourse with him in the natural way, and while he was engaged in the act, her husband, lying on the floor, moved as if he might be about 'to come to,' or regain consciousness; and defendant got up, and struck him another disabling blow, left him on the floor, got back in bed with Mrs. Carroll, and, forcibly and against her will, completed the sexual act--raped her.

Defendant then carried her husband into the bathroom, washed the blood off his face, walked down the stairs, and left the apartment. As he did so, he told Mrs. Carroll not to cry out or call the police, or he would come back. As soon as he had gone she got her baby, went about half a block to the home of her mother, who called the Memphis police. When they arrived, her mother went in an ambulance with the husband to the hospital, and these officers went with Mrs. Carroll to the apartment to observe appearances there.

These officers testified that though 'not hysterical,' she 'had been crying,' and was 'upset' and 'nervous,' but 'rational.' She told two of them, Lieutenant Smith and Officer Beech, that she had been 'criminally assaulted'; that the intruder threatened her with a knife, forced her to have sexual relations with him both ways--first in an unnatural way and then by raping her; and she found and gave the officers the knife the intruder had used--a black-handled steak knife--which was put in evidence and sent up. Lieutenant Smith, in his cross-examination said:

'A. Then, she said the intruder made her have unnatural relations and then was in the act of having normal relations when her and her husband apparently was coming to again and he got up and hit him again and then had the relations with her.

'Q. In other words, he had unnatural relations with her and then started having natural relations with her and during the course of that the husband aroused and he got up and cracked him again and then went back and finished the act?

'A. Finished the act, yes, sir.'

Lieutenant Smith saw the ripped window screen and mud and dirt on the window sill where defendant had entered, and saw splotches of blood on the stairs and on the sheet on Mrs. Carroll's bed. He also testified that there was mud and dirt on the sheet at the foot of the bed. This sheet was put in evidence as an exhibit, and sent up with the record. Also, a photograph showing the blood splotches on the stairs was introduced and sent up as an exhibit.

As these officers were examining this screen in Mrs. Carroll's apartment (621-D), they also noticed that the screen had been cut in Apartment 621-F. On leaving Mrs. Carroll's apartment, defendant had walked down two doors, passing by Apartment 621-E, to Apartment 621-F, and cut the kitchen window screen, raised the window, and entered Apartment 621-F, which was occupied by Mrs. Edna Sneed and her three small children. Her testimony as to this was admitted over defendant's objection.

She said that she was asleep on a couch downstairs and her children upstairs; that she was awakened when defendant turned on her light, and he asked her: 'Do you want to make love to me?'; that when she said: 'No,' he put a knife to her throat, made her take her clothes off, and engage in sexual perversion with him (put her mouth on his penis), and then was about to force her to have sexual intercourse with him, when the officers knocked on her door, she dressed, let them in, and they arrested him.

Defendant denied that he raped Mrs. Carroll--said he never touched her; but he admitted breaking into her apartment, assaulting her husband, and breaking into Mrs. Sneed's apartment. He denied the sexual perversion charged by Mrs. Sneed, but admitted he was about to have sexual intercourse with her, when the officers came, but said it was with her consent. He claimed he broke into both of these apartments by mistake, thinking each was 621-E, where his wife had lived; and that he did this to get his 'clothes' which he said he thought were there.

He said he escaped from a prison camp in California, hitchhiked to Memphis, arrived there in the afternoon of September 7, 1961; and that he did this because he wanted to see his wife, Jean Carroll. He had been released from the Shelby County workhouse in August 1960, and he and his family had gone to California, where he was soon arrested on a charge of burglary. His wife and children returned to Memphis, he was convicted of this charge, and sentenced to serve a year, and had served all of that time but 51 days when he escaped.

His wife had lived for a while in Apartment 621-E, but in July or August 1961, had moved out of it and gone to live with her sister, Mrs. Wilcoxson, in Frayser, a town in Shelby County. Defendant testified that soon after his arrival in Memphis on September 7, 1961, he called his sister-in-law, Mrs. Ruth Hammers, on the telephone, told her he had got back to Memphis, and asked her where his wife Jean was; that Mrs. Hammers told him she was at the home of Mrs. Wilcoxson in Frayser; and that he then telephoned Jean, but she refused to see him and told him she was going to divorce him.

He said that this so upset him that he decided to go to Florida next day; that, in pursuance of this plan, later that night, he broke into both of these two apartments under the mistaken belief that each was the one where his wife lived and where his clothes and personal effects were; and that he did this without any criminal intent, innocently, and only to get these things to go to Florida next day.

On rebuttal, Mrs. Ruth Hammers, called as a witness for the State, testified that on the afternoon of September 7, 1961, defendant called her at her home on the telephone, said he had just got back to Memphis, and wanted to see his wife Jean; that he had gone by the apartment where Jean had been living and 'she wasn't there'; and he asked Mrs. Hammers where she was. Mrs. Hammers told him she had moved from that apartment and was living in the home of Mrs. Wilcoxson in Frayser.

For defendant, it is earnestly urged that the evidence does not sustain the verdict; that the charge of rape rests entirely upon the uncorroborated testimony of the prosecutrix Mrs. Carroll; that the credibility of her and of Mrs. Sneed is open to grave doubt; and that we should disbelieve their testimony and believe defendant's denial of the charge and his explanation of his presence in the apartments on the night in question.

This argument overlooks the legal effect of the verdict of the jury, and also the law governing appellate review. The jury and the Trial Judge saw the witnesses face to face, heard them testify, and observed their demeanor on the stand, and were in much better position than we are, to determine the weight to be given their testimony. The 'human atmosphere of the trial and the totality of the evidence' before the court below cannot be reproduced in an appellate court, which sees only the written record (Powell v. Streatham Manor Nursing Home, (1935) A.C. 243, 257, 267). Folk v. Folk, 210...