Gambrell v. State

• Decision Date: 30 May 1960
• Docket Number: No. 41543,41543
• Citation: 120 So.2d 758,238 Miss. 892
• Parties: Thomas B. GAMBRELL v. STATE of Mississippi.
• Court: Mississippi Supreme Court

Page 758

120 So.2d 758

238 Miss. 892

Thomas B. GAMBRELL v. STATE of Mississippi.

No. 41543.

Supreme Court of Mississippi.

May 30, 1960.

Earle L. Wingo, E. J. Currie, Sr. & Jr., Hattiesburg, Carey Bufkin, Hubert S. Lipscomb, Jackson, for appellant.

Joe T. Patterson, Atty. Gen., by G. Garland Lyell, Jr., Asst. Atty. Gen., for appellee.

GILLESPIE, Justice.

Thomas B. Gambrell, an attorney about 31 years of age, was indicted for the murder of Mississippi Highway Patrolman H. L. Duckworth, a kinsman and friend of appellant. The trial resulted in conviction and the death penalty.

Appellant was employed in the early part of 1959 as a field representative by John Gregg, campaign manager for Ross Barnett, candidate for Governor. He had been assigned to the Hattiesburg area in the second primary. Duckworth was killed between midnight and 1:00 A.M. on the morning of August 19, 1959, in Room 9, Marco Courts, near Hattiesburg, Mississippi. Patrolman Duckworth had been requested to find appellant and another man. Duckworth got in touch with another patrolman and they met at about 11:00 P.M. on Tuesday night, August 18, 1959, and began a search of various motor courts and other places. The patrolman were not expecting any trouble. Patrolman Ray, who was with Duckworth, did not know appellant was one of the persons Duckworth was looking for and Duckworth referred to appellant only as a friend. The two patrolmen arrived at the Marco Courts just after midnight, and when it was found that appellant was in Room 9, they drove to that unit. Duckworth told Ray that he would be back in a few minutes and then went to Room 9 and knocked on the door in sight of Ray who stayed in the patrol car. The door opened and Duckworth went in the room. In about five minutes, Duckworth ran out of the room and fell. Ray saw blood on Duckworth and saw that he was not wearing his belt and pistol as he was when he entered the room. Ray put Duckworth in the patrol car and then saw appellant standing at the door of Room 9. Appellant stated, 'I will teach him to come check on me, take him on to the hospital, I don't think he is hurt too bad anyway.' Ray drew his gun to shoot appellant and Duckworth said, 'Don't shoot, don't shoot.' Duckworth asked to be taken to the hospital as he needed help. Duckworth was dead when he reached the hospital, having been shot. The missile entered his back just below the tip of the right shoulder blade and came out just below the left breast nipple.

After Duckworth was taken to the hospital, a number of officers went back to the Marco Courts. A number of telephone calls were made from the office to appellant demanding that he come out unarmed. Appellant told the officers he had called the F.B.I. and others who would be out there in a little while. He did call John Gregg at Jackson and told him that Duckworth thought a lot of him, Gregg, and that he had just shot Duckworth with a 38 revolver (he was shot with a 22-calibre revolver). Appellant came out of the room after two or three hours. He was dressed and was wearing Duckworth's 'Sam Brown' belt with Duckworth's pistol in it. He was also wearing a loaded 22 revolver and a scabbard with a knife in it. He was carrying a handkerchief and a pair of handcuffs in his hands. He gave the weapons to the sheriff and offered no resistance. He told the officers when he came out of the room that when Duckworth visits him he always removes his gun, that he did not know what was wrong with Duckworth because he hesitated to remove his gun. He also stated that after a while Duckworth removed his gun. Appellant was asked if Duckworth was shot with the 22-calibre revolver, and he answered: 'Let's put it this way, that is the gun that was in my hand when Duckworth was shot.' Appellant then said he knew his rights and did not want to answer any further questions. On the way to jail, appellant carried on a cool and coherent conversation about politics and made no reference to the tragedy.

Appellant entered a plea of not guilty by reason of insanity. No suggestion of insanity at the time of trial was made during the trial.

After the State rested, the defense called numerous witnesses on the issue of appellant's sanity. To detail all the proof in this regard would unduly lengthen this opinion. We shall summarize what was shown.

As early as 1957, when appellant was working for an insurance company, he began to engage in meaningless and incoherent conversations and to write reports that made no sense. Two of these reached the company's home office and appear in the record. Appellant began making, and made many, memoranda that made no sense, and a great many of these were signed '13'. Appellant's superior would ask about the symbol '13' and all he ever got out of appellant was that 'they know.' By March 1958, appellant's condition was worse; he could do no work and would sit around the insurance office writing meaningless memoranda and staring at the walls; he would not talk. The office force thought he was mentally sick and his superior requested that appellant allow them to have him treated by a physician. Appellant refused treatment and he was asked to resign because his superior and coworkers were afraid he would either kill someone or kill himself.

In the meantime, beginning in January 1958, appellant began sending 'reports' to Mr. Bush, one of the assistants to the United States Attorney. The long so-called 'reports' were meaningless, incoherent, and filled with trivial and senseless handprinted words. Mr. Bush testified that he could make no sense whatever out of them. Many were signed or contained the symbols 'O-O' and '13'. Appellant once called Mr. Bush and told him that appellant was on a secret investigation, was in danger of his life, and the reports he was sending would become useful in the future. These reports were shown to the Jackson Police Department. Finally, Mr. Bush called appellant to his office and told him that he could not understand the so-called 'reports' and requested that he stop sending them. Appellant was astounded that Mr. Bush could not find violation of the law in the reports. A large mass of the 'reports' were introduced in evidence and appear in the record here in original form, and it is safe to state that there is no sense whatever in them, and any reasonable person would conclude that no rational mind could have conceived to write them.

About April or May 1958, appellant went to the University of Mississippi and visited the Dean of the Law School and Professor Fox. Shortly before that time, appellant had written a letter to a former law professor requesting that the latter become his general counsel on a big oil deal that appellant was working on; but at that time, appellant was out of work. When he talked to the Law Professors, he had a brief case which he constantly referred to as containing all information about his oil interests. He stated that a Hindu Potentate had given him the brief case; that he had a number of south Mississippi Counties tied up for oil, and the big oil companies were fighting him; that the oil companies had employed the F.B.I. and the State Police, and these agencies had kidnapped appellant's wife and set her up as a prostitute in New Orleans as the head of a ring bringing in girls from Mississippi to New Orleans. The law professors could make no sense out of appellant's conversation during the long talks each had with him. The professors were so alarmed they made arrangements to have appellant's friends watch him and see if he needed treatment.

On Thursday preceding the Wednesday morning when Duckworth was killed, appellant was in the Hattiesburg office of the Barnett Campaign. Mrs. Fleming, State Director of Women, had been to the Coast and arrived at the office late in the afternoon. When Mrs. Fleming, who was not working under appellant, went into the office where appellant was appellant ordered her to give a minute by minute account of her activities, with great detail as to where she was and who she saw and if she was seen by others at the various places she had been. He also wanted to know if Mrs. Fleming could prove she was at this place and that place. Appellant had a bad appearance, and his conversation and questions were completely irrational. Appellant took copious notes of her answers to every question. Mrs. Fleming was greatly alarmed at appellant's irrational behavior and drove alone at night directly to John Gregg's home in Jackson to report the matter.

On Friday morning preceding the killing, Buddy Gregg, a coworker in the Barnett Campaign, stayed in the same room with appellant at the Marco Courts in Hattiesburg. Appellant woke Buddy Gregg at 5:00 A.M. and said Eisenhower had sent him down to investigate integration at Little Rock. Appellant then left for Jackson. Appellant called Buddy Gregg at 4:30 A.M. the next day and told him to go to Taylorsville and get appellant's brother to give him an Italian Pistola and to get a 'Long Tom' from appellant's father and bring them to the Belmont Cafe in Jackson because 'the quarterback deal in the Belmont is ready.' Buddy Gregg did not go to Taylorsville, but went to Jackson, where he saw appellant at a motel and appellant told Buddy Gregg that Eisenhower had sent him to investigate Little Rock and that Mrs. Fleming had integrated Little Rock and caused all the trouble there. On Monday immediately preceding the killing, appellant requested Allison James, a Barnett Campaign worker at Hattiesburg, to take appellant's automobile to Jackson and exchange it. Appellant engaged in irrational talk and behavior. When James returned from Jackson, he was in a motel room with appellant for about one and a half hours. Appellant showed James a medallion on a key chain and told James that it was the key to the Vatican and would unlock the Pope's front door; that appellant had contact with the Italian underworld and that money in unlimited quantities was...