Dickins v. State

• Decision Date: 12 December 1949
• Docket Number: No. 37490,37490
• Citation: 43 So.2d 366,208 Miss. 69
• Parties: DICKINS v. STATE.
• Court: Mississippi Supreme Court

Page 366

43 So.2d 366

208 Miss. 69

DICKINS v. STATE.

No. 37490.

Supreme Court of Mississippi, in Banc.

Dec. 12, 1949.

Suggestion of Error Overruled Jan. 23, 1950.

See 43 So.2d 887.

W. D. Conn, Jr., Jackson, B. B. Wilkes, Greenville, for appellant.

Greek L. Rice, Atty. Gen. by Joe T. Patterson, Ass't Atty. Gen., Stanley Sanders, Greenville, Williard L. McIlwain, Greenville, for appellee.

MONTGOMERY, Justice.

The appellant, Mrs. Ruth Thompson Dickins, was indicted by the Grand Jury of Washington County for the murder of her mother, Mrs. Idella Long Thompson, and was found guilty of the charge by the jury, which was unable to agree upon the punishment, and she was by the Court sentenced to a life term in the penitentiary.

Mrs. Thompson lived on Deer Creek Drive in the City of Leland, and her daughter, Mrs. Dickins, the appellant, lived on the same street with only two houses between the home of Mrs. Thompson and the home of Mrs. Dickins.

On the afternoon of November 17, 1948, Dr. K. L. Witte received a telephone call at his clinic in Leland from Mrs. Dickins at approximately 3:15 p. m., and according to his testimony went directly to the Thompson home and arrived there in five minutes. He was met at the front door by Mrs. Dickins. He went to the bathroom and there saw Mrs. Thompson's mutilated body on the bathroom floor. There were two people present when Dr. Witte arrived,--one of them, the appellant, who was wounded and thoroughly bloody, the other was Mrs. Thompson, dead on the bathroom floor. The jury was warranted in inferring that Mrs. Dickins had taken part quite recently in a very bitter and bloody struggle, the evidence justifying the jury in finding that some of the blood on her clothes had come from Mrs. Thompson, and that not all of it had come from her own wounds. Her participation in the affray surrounding her mother's homicide was a reasonable and justifiable inference, and the jury might well have believed that she either committed it, or saw the person who did.

Under these circumstances, it is quite reasonable that Mrs. Dickins might have felt it necessary to make some explanation as to her own physical condition, with her clothing saturated with blood, her hair down over her face, her left hand bruised and wounded, and also other lacerations on her head and on her right hand; but, be that as it may, Mrs. Dickins did see fit to make a voluntary statement to the officers as to what she knew of the occurrence.

In her statement, which was given about 2 1/2 hours after Mrs. Thompson's funeral, she stated that she had been requested by her mother to trim a shrub, and that she had gone to the Dickins' garage and there obtained her pruning shears and carried them to her mother's home; that on reaching the Thompson home she went to the refrigerator and poured a drink of water, and while drinking it on the back porch, she placed the shears on top of the heater that was on this porch. Her mother had a cat and some kittens, and she was anxious to obtain from Mrs. Dickins some paper shavings that Mrs. Dickins had in order to make a bed for the cat and the kittens. Mrs. Dickins left the Thompson home and went to her own home to get these shavings, but was unable to find them. While there she took the temperature of her little daughter, who was sick in bed and was taking penicillin, talked with the cook about something for supper, and discussed with her young daughter the purchase of some embroidery thread, and then returned to the Thompson home. Mrs. Dickins said this was well past 2:30.

Her mother had stated that she would meet her at the back door, and go with her to the garage to bed down the kittens. Mrs. Dickins usually parked in front of the Thompson home on her visits there, but on this occasion she drove into the driveway leading to the garage, back to a point near the back door, where it was customary to stop when unloading groceries. She there stopped the car, got out and went into the back door of the Thompson home. Both the screen door and the entrance door to the porch, she says, were closed. On entering the porch she saw blood on the floor, and looking toward the bathroom she could see her mother's feet on the floor. She says that she immediately concluded that her mother had committed suicide as had her father, and she rushed toward the bathroom hearing her mother gurgle at the time she reached the door and satisfying her own mind that at that time her mother was still alive.

As she entered the door, she says she was attacked by someone standing against the wall in the bathroom, at the right side of the entrance door; that he immediately attacked her, and she engaged in a scuffle while her assailant was striking at her with the shears; that he caught her left hand and twisted and squeezed it, and that she was reaching for the shears to prevent her assailant from inflicting harm upon her with them, and that while so struggling she was able to take the shears away from the man, and that she dropped them to the bathroom floor. Her assailant had inflicted two wounds on the right side of her head during this struggle. She was uncertain as to whether her assailant knocked her down or whether she slipped on the blood on the floor, but she is positive that she fell sprawling on the floor on her stomach, and in this way she accounts for the blood on her clothing; when she fell to the floor, her assailant fled. She got up, ran to the back porch, and saw the man, who was a Negro, fleeing out the back door, and her mind became satisfied that he was gone. She then immediately returned to the bathroom to see about her mother, and then went to the telephone in the adjoining bedroom and telephoned for Dr. W. S. (Bunte) Witte, and was told by Mrs. Paul Mason that he was operating. She rang again about 5 minutes later, and talked to Dr. K. L. Witte, and then sat on the radiator in the bedroom until Dr. Witte arrived.

When Dr. K. L. Witte arrived, he said that he went to the bathroom and found Mrs. Thompson's body on the bathroom floor; that she was dead, had been dead for a minimum of an hour, and her death was caused by multiple wounds; that she had enough cuts on her face and head to kill anybody; that the left side of her head was chopped all to pieces, and he identified photographs of the body which show that the right side of the head was practically mutilated, and that there were numerous lacerations and punctures over the head, the hand, and the arm of Mrs. Thompson. Dr. W. S. Witte arrived at the house at about 4:45 p. m., and while Mrs. Thompson's body was still on the bathroom floor, he made a physical examination and testified that she had multiple wounds on her head and there were numerous lacerations; that she had on a hairnet and most of her hair was gone; that he picked up the skin with the hair, and that it was nothing but a laceration and gruesome; that she had a fractured skull over her right ear, about two inches long and three-fourths to one inch wide, and that she must have been hit 150 to 200 times around the head; that her right elbow was broken; the middle finger of her right hand was practically severed; the ring finger on her left hand was severed and only hanging by the skin; there were lacerations on the left forearm, and multiple scratches on the right forearm. He examined Mrs. Thompson's body to determine whether or not there had been a criminal assault, and found no evidence of it whatsoever. He also testified that Mrs. Thompson had been in the hospital, and from the testimony of other witnesses it developed that she had returned to her home from the hospital at about 11 o'clock on the morning of the day of her death.

The witnesses agree that Mrs. Thompson's body was lying on its back on the bathroom floor, with the head toward the tub, and with the feet angling across the bathroom in the direction of the door or the commode. The shears were lying between Mrs. Thompson's head and a bathroom stool which was in the corner of the bathroom, in front of a small locker at the end of the tub, and that no blood was visible on the upper part of the shears, though the shears were resting in the blood that was on the floor. The back-porch floor, particularly the east side thereof, and the bathroom floor, were covered with blood; blood was spattered on the side of the tub, on the lavatory, and on the walls of the bathroom, and there was one mark on the ceiling near a corner. The doors and walls of the back porch were also spattered with blood, all indicating that there had been a terrific and bloody battle.

The shears were later found to have two hairs between the cutting blades, and these were determined, on chemical examination, to be the hair of Mrs. Thompson. Various specimens of hair were picked up from the floor, the tub, and the walls of the bathroom, and some from the back porch, and all of these were determined to be the hair of Mrs. Thompson.

When Mrs. Thompson's body was picked up from the floor of the bathroom, a button was found on the floor underneath the arm of Mrs. Thompson. The testimony shows that the lapel was torn off Mrs. Dickins' jacket, or at least the lapel was torn. The State undertook to introduce Mrs. Dickins' clothing in evidence, evidently for the purpose of showing the torn lapel and that the jacket had a missing button identical with the button found under the arm, but this evidence was objected to by the defendant on the ground that the clothes had not been lawfully obtained from Mrs. Dickins, and that it was incompetent for the State to introduce them. This objection was sustained by the Court.

Mrs. Thompson's body, when observed by those first arriving at the Thompson residence, was lying partly on a rug on the bathroom floor. One of Mrs. Dickins' fingernails was found on this rug; the floor of the back porch showed drag marks, as if something had been dragged from the back porch into the bathroom. One of Mrs. Dickins'...