Edwardson v. State

• Decision Date: 01 March 1951
• Docket Number: 1 Div. 415
• Parties: EDWARDSON v. STATE.
• Court: Alabama Supreme Court

Page 233

51 So.2d 233

255 Ala. 246

EDWARDSON v. STATE.

1 Div. 415.

Supreme Court of Alabama.

March 1, 1951.

Douglas Stanard and Robt. T. Cunningham, of Mobile, for appellant.

Si Garrett, Atty. Gen., and Jas. T. Hardin, Asst. Atty. Gen., for the State.

BROWN, Justice.

This is the appeal of Lexie Lugenia Edwardson who was indicted by a Grand Jury in the Circuit Court of Mobile County for murder in the first degree, the indictment charging that 'before the finding of this indictment Lexie Lugenia Edwardson, whose name is to the Grand Jury otherwise unknown than as stated, unlawfully and with malice aforethought, killed Chester Tullous by shooting him with a gun, against the peace and dignity of the State of Alabama.' On her trial she was convicted of murder in the first degree and sentenced to suffer death by electrocution. The appeal comes here under the Automatic Appeal Statute. Code of 1940, Tit. 15, § 382(1), Pocket Part.

The defendant before arraignment made motion to quash the indictment on the following grounds, among others: '(7) The defendant was compelled to be a witness against herself before the Grand Jury returning this indictment.'

The state did not take issue upon this motion but demurred thereto on sundry grounds, among others, that said indictment is legal and proper in all respect; that the said grounds assigned are not grounds upon which this indictment may be quashed; that this indictment cannot be tested by motion to quash on the ground there was no sufficient evidence before the Grand Jury which returned said indictment; because this indictment cannot be tested by motion to quash on the ground there was no legal evidence produced before the Grand Jury which returned this indictment; because this indictment cannot be tested by a motion to quash on the ground there was no legal evidence to authorize the finding of this indictment; because this indictment cannot be tested by a motion to quash on the ground that the evidence upon which the indictment was based was incompetent and because this indictment cannot be tested by a motion to quash on the ground there was no legal evidence to support the indictment.

The court sustained the demurrer to the motion to quash and the defendant excepted. The effect of the demurrer was to confess as true the facts stated in the motion to quash and the court erred in sustaining the demurrer thereto. The state should not have demurred and if the facts alleged were not true, issue should have been joined and evidence adduced to prove the facts. Hart v. State, 117 Ala. 183, 23 So. 43; Allen v. State, 162 Ala. 74, 50 So. 279; Sparronberger v. State, 53 Ala. 481, 25 Am.Rep. 643. The motion to quash was the proper way to raise the question. Franklin v. State, 233 Ala. 203, 171 So. 245; Thompson v. State, 24 Ala.App. 300, 134 So. 679.

Aside from the alleged 'voluntary' confessions procured from the defendant, the evidence against her is entirely circumstantial and tends to show that on the morning of December 27, 1949, the body of the deceased, the fourteen year old son of the defendant, was found in the back room of the house where he usually slept. The house on Monroe Street in the City of Mobile was the home occupied by the defendant and the deceased. It appeared that his death had resulted from a gun shot wound entering the breast. The wound, as testified by Dr. Grubbs, the Toxicologist, was 'two and a half inches from the midline of the body at the nipple level, ranging down into the body through the lower lung, the upper end of the stomach into the backbone. This wound was five-eights of an inch in diameter and had about it a powder stain which was two and a half inches in diameter. This stain was determined to be a powder stain by chemical analysis of some of the material from the skin. The wound was in the upper edge of this powder stain, entered the body and ranged downward at an angle of thirty degrees, from the vertical and forty-five degrees from the horizontal and struck the backbone. A portion of the shot remained under the skin at the backbone and three shot went through the tissues to the outer side. This wound was through the major vessels of the liver and the lungs and sufficient to cause death.'

The evidence tends to show that the shot was fired from a shot gun loaded with no. 6 shot, three of which passed through his body and were on the inside of his underwear or clothes but the major part of the charge appeared under the skin next to his spine constituting what the toxicologist characterized as a 'pone of shot.'

The evidence shows that the defendant spent the night of the 26th of December with a friend, a Mrs. Hare, who lives a few blocks away from the defendant's residence and defendant had stated to Mrs. Hare when she went to her house that she was afraid to stay in the house with the deceased, who had threatened to kill her and himself, and shortly before she left the house she discovered the gas in the bathroom had been turned on in full force, that she had heard deceased going in and out of the bathroom several times.

The evidence goes to show that when the defendant returned to her home next morning about nine o'clock the house was closed and locked from the inside and defendant procured the help of the landlady's son Billie Peavy to aid her in getting into the house. He opened a screen of a side window on the back so he could climb through and open the house from the inside. After the doors were opened by Billie, defendant went to the living room in the front of the house, took off her wraps and then went back to the back bedroom where the deceased was found. She then began to scream and she and the boy went on out the front door and back to the home of Mrs. Peavy who lived next door and Mrs. Peavy called the police who soon arrived and began the investigation. The body was lying diagonally across the cot, backside down with feet on the floor. Blood had run down on the cot and on to the floor and on the deceased's clothes. The muzzle of the gun was resting on the cot beside deceased's body with the butt on the floor and the 'forearm' was off and on the floor. The police officers took the defendant into custody, carried her to the police station where she made a statement. (This statement was not adduced in evidence.) They released her to arrange for the funeral of the deceased and to attend his burial. The police however kept her under strict surveillance until after the funeral on the 29th of December, when they arrested her and committed her to jail after 'docketing' a case against her. Some six days later, after the defendant had been questioned day and night by a number of detectives persistently, they procured from her a full confession, which not only related the circumstances attending the death of the deceased, but gave in detail the history of defendant's life. The confession was procured on the afternoon of January 3rd after a narcotic had been administered to her by the City Physician, Dr. 'Hope.' The alleged confession was taken by the Administrative Assistant to the Solicitor, William Kerns. Among other things, he testified as follows:

'On the 3rd of January I went over to the Police Department to check the docket for the next morning and I had to see Captain Rollings and there were several cases set and I had to get reports on it, and about three-thirty when I got him out and talked to him he told me to stick around for a few minutes that he wanted me to do something for him, so I went ahead and picked up my reports and checked into them, and about quarter to five Captain Rollings came out and asked me to step in his office, which I did. He and Detective Burch and Mrs. Edwardson were sitting at the desk. He introduced me to Mrs. Edwardson and told her who I was, that I was connected with the Solicitor's Office, and told her that he was preparing to turn his investigation report over to us on the investigation he had made on her, and asked her if she would like to tell anything for her side of it, said I would be glad to take it down, and she said she would, so we started off talking to her and I just sat there and listened and did all the writing and then come on over here and typed it out and brought it back over there and gave it to Captain Rollings. * * *

'Q. And did they threaten her in anyway to get her to say anything, hold out any inducement to her or offer her any reward to get her to state what she did state and you took down and typed and which she signed? A. No sir.

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'What were they doing in there?

'A. Mrs. Edwardson was sitting at Chief McFayden's desk, it was in his office, and Captain Rollings was facing her on the other side and I heard him reading it and then I saw the lady check it.

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'Q. What time was that? A. That was about three-thirty or quarter of four when I was talking to him.'

Police Captain Rollings, testified that he sent the defendant 'back there to be given some medicine but he didn't know what it was.' Dr. Hope, the City Physician, testified:

'Q. And you treated her on one occasion you testified, what was the trouble with her? A. Well, my recollection is that she was complaining, said she hadn't been able to sleep all night, and I think she said that they sent her to the City Hospital, but that they didn't do anything for her, and she was suffering with cramps, and said she did that every month and she needed something to relieve her so she could sleep a little, she was just all upset, she was in trouble.

'Q. And did you prescribe for her? A. Yes, I think I gave her a quarter of a grain of codeine; I think that is what it was, but I am not sure about that, just gave her a sedative.

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'Q. And you gave her two of those, is that correct? A. Yes sir; and

'Q. And did you have any conversation with her? A. Yes, she talked and told me, said something about her troubles, she just couldn't stand it any longer, she was suffering and...