Chavers v. State

• Decision Date: 16 August 1977
• Docket Number: 6 Div. 211
• Citation: 361 So.2d 1096
• Parties: James CHAVERS, Jr. v. STATE.
• Court: Alabama Court of Criminal Appeals

Page 1096

361 So.2d 1096

James CHAVERS, Jr. v. STATE.

6 Div. 211.

Court of Criminal Appeals of Alabama.

Aug. 16, 1977.

Rehearing Denied Oct. 4, 1977.

L. Drew Redden and William N. Clark of Rogers, Howard, Redden & Mills, Birmingham, for appellant.

William J. Baxley, Atty. Gen., and Barry V. Hutner, Asst. Atty. Gen., for the State.

DeCARLO, Judge.

James Chavers, Jr. was indicted for the offense of first degree murder. At the conclusion of the trial before a jury he was convicted of manslaughter in the first degree, and his punishment was fixed at five years' imprisonment in the penitentiary. The appellant gave notice of appeal and asked for probation, which was denied. His motion for a new trial was denied, and the appellant is now before this court.

James Chavers, Jr. lived at 524 Booker Street in Roosevelt City, Jefferson County, Alabama, with his wife, Ethel Bell Chavers, Carlos Chavers, their ten-year-old son, and his step-daughter, Cora Dickerson.

On June 11, 1975, shortly after 6:30 P.M., the appellant returned home from his job at Malone Freight Lines, which he had held for some nineteen years. After eating supper with his family he went to the front porch and read the evening paper. Cora Dickerson testified that her mother also went to the porch, while she washed the dishes. Her stepfather stayed on the porch until about 8:00 P.M. when he went to the back yard and began cutting grass. She recalled going to bed about the same time. Cora testified that her stepfather returned to the house at 9:30 or 9:45 P.M. and that she and her brother were in their room at the time. She was reading and the lights were on in her room and in her mother's room. Cora said that her stepfather went straight to the bedroom where her mother was and she heard him say, "Who knocked the knob off the lamp?" She testified that his voice was loud and that he asked her mother how she got the bruise on her arm. She said that her mother told him she did not know, and "that it was a possibility that she could have knocked up against something," her stepfather said, "Some man had been in and put it on there," to which her mother replied, "that wasn't what happened, it was just probably something she had hit up on."

Cora testified that she got out of the bed and was standing near the door of the bedroom. She stated she saw her stepfather come around to the side of the bed and lean over her mother with one arm raised in the air. Her mother said, "let her up." With Cora at the door was Carlos, who at that moment ran back to their bedroom, returned with a vase and hit his father over the head. She testified that Carlos told her stepfather "not to hit his mother." According to Cora, when the appellant was hit over the head he said, "don't nobody hit me on my head and get away with it."

Cora said her mother at that point had gotten up and her stepfather pulled a gun from his pocket and fired what Cora thought was two shots. At the time her stepfather pulled the gun, he was pointing it in the direction of her mother. She said that, after the shots were fired, her mother fell to the floor.

Cora recalled asking the appellant not to shoot her, but that he fired at her twice and she was hit in the upper hip. She stated that after the appellant shot her, he then turned and fired in the direction of the doorway where Carlos was standing.

According to Cora, the appellant passed her in the hall carrying the gun, at which time she got up and telephoned her aunt. Before she completed the call, the appellant returned to the house and went to the bedroom where her mother was. After calling her aunt, Cora returned to her parents' room where she saw her mother lying on the floor with blood on her chest. She testified that the appellant told her mother "to get up, he was going to carry her to the hospital." She said he then left, and the police and the ambulance came within a short time.

Carlos Chavers, the appellant's son, testified that he went to bed about 8:00 P.M. in the bedroom he shared with his sister. He said his mother was in bed when his father came in the house about 10:00 P.M. Carlos then overheard his parents arguing. He stated they were arguing about "a doorknob" and he heard his father say "somebody beat her up." Carlos testified that he went to his parents' room and upon seeing his father "fixing to beat her up," he picked up a vase and hit his father on the back of the head. He recalled that his father was bending over when he hit him and that he, Carlos, then ran from the room. Carlos stated he then heard gunshots but could not recall how many. When he returned to the room the gun was in his father's hand and his mother was on the floor. According to Carlos, when his father pointed and fired the gun in his direction, he ran to a neighbor's house.

William R. Stroud, a police officer with the city of Roosevelt, testified that on June 11, 1975, he went to the Chaverses' residence in response to a radio dispatch. When he arrived he saw the appellant "coming out from under the carport." According to Stroud the appellant said "that a gun had went off and shot his wife." When Stroud entered the house Cora Dickerson was standing in the door and he found Mrs. Chavers on the floor in the bedroom. Stroud testified that Mrs. Chavers was taken to the hospital, where she died shortly thereafter. Later he was present when an autopsy was performed on her body.

On June 12, 1975, at approximately 9:45 A.M., Jay Glass, a deputy coroner for Jefferson County and an assistant pathologist at the Cooper Green Hospital in Birmingham, performed an autopsy on the body identified to him as that of Ethel Chavers. It was Glass's opinion that death was caused by a gunshot wound to the abdomen with perforation of the liver and the inferior vena cava, resulting in bleeding into the abdominal cavity accompanied with shock.

James A. Howell was employed by the Jefferson County Sheriff's Department as an evidence technician. On the morning of June 12, 1975, he went to the residence at 524 Booker Street in Roosevelt City. Howell identified photographs that he had taken of the Chaverses' residence, one of them showing a closet door with a hole in it. He testified that inside the closet in a box he found a lead slug. Also, he identified a picture of a chair where he found a gun under the cushion. During the trial he identified the gun as a 6-shot revolver.

James Foy, the Chief of Police for Roosevelt City, stated that on June 11, 1975, he arrived at the Chaverses' residence about 11:30 P.M., but the appellant was not present. He made photographs of the house's interior and identified one photograph depicting a "bullet hole" in the floor of the front bedroom. Foy said he also observed a hole in the wall, and on the outside of the house opposite the hole he found a projectile underneath the shingle.

Following Chief Foy's testimony the State rested and the defense made a motion to exclude the State's evidence. Counsel argued that evidence was insufficient to support a conviction for any degree of murder or manslaughter. Further he stated there was insufficient evidence from which the jury could be expected to be convinced beyond a reasonable doubt and to a moral certainty of the defendant's guilt as to any "degree of homicide."

The motion was overruled, and, after the defense called four character witnesses who testified to appellant's good reputation, the appellant took the stand in his own behalf.

James Chavers testified that on June 11th he returned home from work shortly after 6:30 P.M., ate supper, and went to the front porch to read the paper. He said his wife, Ethel, joined him on the porch and they discussed the charges for installing a sewer. He told her he had withdrawn fourteen hundred dollars from the bank. Chavers said that the only other discussion he had with his wife concerned a bruise on her arm. He denied discussing the bruise on his wife's arm at any other place than on the front porch. Chavers went across his yard after remaining on the porch for about ten minutes and had a conversation with a neighbor. Appellant stated that after he walked through the yard he watched his son Carlos pick plums. He then decided to cut the grass at the back of his house. Chavers could not recall how long he remained outside cutting the grass but said that it was "good dark" when the rain started that caused him to come inside.

The appellant testified that he did not have his glasses on at the time but was wearing his "contacts." He explained that he had had surgery on his left eye for removal of a cataract and that that necessitated the wearing of a contact lens on that eye. Chavers went on to explain that without his contact lens on that eye he "couldn't see anything." Further, he said he wore "regular eye glasses when wearing the contact lens" because he could not see well enough to read without them.

Chavers testified that after entering the house he passed through the corner of his children's room and through the hall into the bedroom that he and his wife occupied. He stated there were no lights on in the hall or in the children's room. However, he did say there was a small light on in the bathroom. On entering the bedroom he went over to the side of the bed where she was lying and removed the pistol from underneath the bed. Chavers explained that ordinarily when he came in to go to bed he removed the pistol from a footlocker in the bedroom and placed it underneath the bed on the side where he slept. The appellant said "Ordinarily when I'm not home, I put it on her side of the bed."

Chavers said that on this particular evening when he went outside to cut the grass he had placed the gun on his wife's side of the bed and as he "got the gun from under the bed to go around I was hit on the head with a vase, some kind of glass substance." The appellant stated he did not recall making any remarks but did recall shooting the gun. He said that he did not...