Edgeworth v. State
| Decision Date | 17 December 1974 |
| Docket Number | 6 Div. 718 |
| Citation | 304 So.2d 911,54 Ala.App. 93 |
| Parties | Alice Faye EDGEWORTH v. STATE. |
| Court | Alabama Court of Criminal Appeals |
Ralph C. Burroughs, Public Defender, Joel L. Sogol, Asst. Public Defender, Tuscaloosa, for appellant.
William J. Baxley, Atty. Gen., and David W. Clark, Asst. Atty. Gen., for the State.
Appellant was indicted for murder in the first degree and convicted of murder in the second degree. Her punishment was fixed at twelve years and one day in the penitentiary. She was and is indigent and was represented at both her arraignment and trial by the Public Defender's office in Tuscaloosa. She pleaded not guilty. She is in this court with a free transcript and trial counsel represents her on appeal.
The facts are not complicated. In the late afternoon of July 20, 1973, appellant shot and killed her stepfather with a pistol in a home jointly occupied by appellant, her husband, her three children by a previous marriage, her mother, and the deceased. They lived at Samantha, a small community a few miles from Tuscaloosa, Alabama.
Appellant's husband worked from 3:00 P.M. until 11:00 P.M. On the day of the homicide, the husband drove appellant and her three minor children to the headquarters of the Salvation Army in Tuscaloosa to buy clothes. The deceased and his wife followed in a pickup truck driven by the deceased. After leaving the Salvation Army, they all drove to the river to watch the boats ply the waters of the river. The husband left the family to go to his job and appellant and her children rode back home in the deceased's pickup truck. The deceased drove with his wife in the cab with him, and appellant and the children rode in the bed of the truck. They made a stop enroute home where the deceased bought a six pack of beer and a watermelon. When they arrived home, appellant picked up the watermelon and placed it on the porch and went to the chicken house. After leaving the chicken house, she entered the house by the back door and went directly to the bedroom occupied by her and her husband. Appellant's mother went to her bedroom. The deceased cut the watermelon and divided it with the children. He took his piece of the watermelon and went in the sitting room to his favorite chair in front of the television set. The children went in the yard to eat and play.
The deceased was a seventy-three year old retired policeman of the town of Berry. He kept a loaded pistol in a holster in a flower vase next to his chair. He had a marked degree of rheumatism and had to depend in a large measure on a walking cane to aid him in his movements, even to get out of a chair. He was a large man. His height was six feet two and one-half inches tall and his estimated weight was two hundred pounds.
The deceased decided he wanted some water and he called appellant's youngest son from the yard and told him to get the water for him. The boy was seven years of age and he could not reach the water and so told the deceased. The deceased became angry and raised his walking cane over his head and threatened to knock the boy's head off if he didn't get the water. The boy was backed up against the deep freeze and could not get by and he started screaming. Appellant heard her son screaming and came out of her bedroom to investigate the trouble. She asked the deceased what was going on and he told her he ordered the boy to get him some water and he wouldn't do it. Appellant told him to leave the boy alone and she would get the water for him. The deceased said no he told the boy to get the water and he was going to see to it that he got the water or he would knock his head off. He had his walking cane raised in a striking position and appellant told him not to hit the boy. The deceased turned in her direction with the cane still raised above his head. Appellant went to the chair where deceased kept his pistol and got it and fired three times point blank at the deceased. He was shot three times in the chest and died instantly.
Mr. Robert B. Johnson, Assistant State Toxicologist, whose qualifications were admitted by the defense, performed an autopsy the day after the homicide and testified that in his opinion death was the result of two gun shot wounds and from shock and hemorrhage of the two vessls which were ruptured. He said either one of the bullets entering the man's body would have proved fatal, but the one in the abdomen would have produced death more rapidly. One .38 caliber slug was recovered from the body. A blood sample was tested and was negative for alcohol in the body of the deceased.
After the shooting, appellant ran out of the house and put the gun on a lawn chair under a peach tree and went to a neighbor's house and called the Police Department and said she had shot Mr. Champion and that she was sorry. She tried to call her husband but he was out on a service call; she left word for him to come to the jail. She returned to the lawn chair where she left the pistol and sat in the chair. She put the gun on the ground beside the chair.
Members of the deceased's family soon arrived and one of them asked her why she shot the man, and she said, 'Wouldn't you shoot a man who was beating your kid with a stick?'
Mr. John Anders had a part-job as an ambulance driver for Hayes Funeral Chapel in Tuscaloosa. He got a telephone call at 4:45 P.M. on July 20, 1973, to go to the home of the deceased and he arrived at 5:05 P.M. He and his helper found the deceased face down on the floor and they turned him over and applied artificial respiration in an attempt to restore life, but it was unsuccessful.
Mr. Anders walked in the back yard and saw appellant sitting in a lawn chair. A pistol was on the ground by the chair and he kicked the pistol out of her reach, picked it up and put it in his pocket. When the Sheriff came, Anders gave him the pistol.
Anders asked appellant who shot the deceased and she replied, ...
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