Culver v. State
| Decision Date | 22 June 1922 |
| Docket Number | 4 Div. 966. |
| Citation | 207 Ala. 657,93 So. 521 |
| Parties | CULVER v. STATE. |
| Court | Alabama Supreme Court |
Appeal from Circuit Court. Henry County; H. A. Pearce, Judge.
Alford Culver was convicted of murder in the first degree, and he appeals. Affirmed.
Lee & Tompkins, of Dothan, for appellant.
Harwell G. Davis, Atty. Gen., for the State.
The defendant, appellant, is sentenced to death for the murder of Miles McCoy. The defendant admitted having struck McCoy two blows on the head with a mattock. Defendant fled, and was later apprehended. He sought to justify his act on the theory of self-defense, testifying that McCoy, provoked at defendant's handling of a mule he was ploughing, struck him with a hoe handle and then, turning the implement, was about to strike him with the blade of the hoe, when defendant ran in under his arms, seized a mattock from the ground and struck McCoy, and again after he fell. There was no eyewitness to the tragedy. Two men near by heard nothing preceding their discovery of McCoy's dead body on the ground.
Section 32 of the 1909 Jury Law (Gen. Acts, Sp. Sess. p. 320) provides that the failure of the sheriff to summon any juror drawn, the failure or refusal of a juror to attend the trial or mistake in the name of a juror, shall not suffice to require the quashing of the venire or the continuance of the case. No error resulted from the fact that at an earlier day in the week of the trial the court excused Gamble because of sickness in his family, juror Gamble not returning on Wednesday as was expected and promised.
J. Nelson Trawick of precinct 18 and another of the same name of precinct 14 were summoned as jurors and both appeared. The court excused Trawick of precinct 14 "because his name was not drawn as a juror and did not appear on the venire." This conclusion of fact required the exclusion of the Trawick of precinct 14 as a member of the venire to try defendant. If not drawn as a juror, that Trawick could not be accepted or serve as a juror. There was no error in declining to accept or to recognize that Trawick as a juror.
The bill of exceptions does not purport to contain all or substantially all of the evidence presented on the trial. The predicate for the admission of defendant's inculpatory statements to Sheriff Corbitt (they were the same, in effect recited by defendant when testifying as a witness) was sufficient to justify the sheriff's testimony reciting them after he had testified that he neither did nor said anything to induce defendant to make the statements. Had another person been shown to have been present on the...
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