Hall v. State

• Decision Date: 22 June 1922
• Docket Number: 8 Div. 408.
• Citation: 94 So. 59,208 Ala. 199
• Parties: HALL v. STATE.
• Court: Alabama Supreme Court

94 So. 59

208 Ala. 199

HALL v. STATE.

8 Div. 408.

Supreme Court of Alabama

June 22, 1922

Rehearing Denied Oct. 12, 1922.

Appeal from Circuit Court, Franklin County; Charles P. Almon, Judge.

Fred Hall was convicted of murder in the first degree and he appeals. Affirmed.

Travis Williams and W. L. Chenault, both of Russellville, and A. H Carmichael, of Tuscumbia, for appellant.

Harwell G. Davis, Atty. Gen., and Lamar Field, Asst. Atty. Gen., for the State.

SAYRE J.

Defendant killed Martha Henderson, and in due course was convicted of murder in the first degree. The state's evidence furnished ample support for the finding of the jury. Defendant pleaded "not guilty," and specially "not guilty by reason of insanity" (Code, § 7176) and it will be considered for the purposes of this appeal that there was evidence tending to support each of these pleas. Many exceptions were reserved at the trial and have been considered as required by the statute; but able counsel have briefed the case for defendant, and there is no need for the specific treatment of questions other than those which they have deemed worthy of discussion. Generally with reference to the plea of not guilty by reason of insanity we think we may with propriety say that, while there was a modicum of evidence tending to show that defendant was not in his normal mind at the time of the killing no verdict in agreement with the great weight of the evidence could have found anything more to the point than a species of emotional insanity, moral obliquity in fact, which has no recognition in the law of this state as an excuse for crime. Boswell v. State, 63 Ala. 307, 35 Am. Rep. 20; Parsons v. State, 81 Ala. 577, 2 So. 854.

The greater part of the record in this cause consists of a transcription of numerous letters written by defendant to deceased. These letters were admitted in evidence over defendant's objection and exception. There was no denial of their authenticity, and, while many of them are without date, it is clear from their contents and the testimony of defendant that they were written during the two years (approximately) of defendant's illicit relations with deceased. The later and most significant of them appear to have been written only a few days before the killing. These letters show defendant's deep infatuation with deceased, a woman of easy virtue. Defendant had a wife and children, but in these letters he protests his love for deceased, shows his willingness and his efforts to divorce his wife, against whom he had no ground of divorce save that she stood in the way of his relations with deceased, and, in order to maintain those relations, avows his readiness to abandon wife, children, relatives, friends, business-everything. At the same time, as these letters show, repeatedly and with increasing frequency, he laid his misfortunes, his profound depression, his moral and financial bankruptcy at the door of deceased. Defendant had frequently met and dallied amorously with deceased in surrounding cities and towns, but these letters show that, as her demands upon him grew, defendant increasingly desired to break away, at least to keep his relations with her under cover, and became more and more anxious lest she come to Russellville, where he lived, as she threatened to do. Evidence aliunde went to show that defendant in his turn threatened to take the life of deceased if she came to Russellville, and then, after she came and while she lay upon the pavement in front of his place of business suffering from his mortal wounds, begging that she be not allowed to die, he reminded her that he told her he would kill her if she came there. In our opinion these letters alone, as declarations by defendant, and especially when read in connection with the other evidence, tended to incriminate defendant, for that they tended to show a motive, and a purpose in pursuance of that motive, to take the life of deceased. They certainly operated to injure defendant in the eyes of the jury, but they tended also, and that legitimately, to create a probability of his guilt, and for that reason were admissible.

In criminal causes the conduct and declarations of the defendant on other occasions are relevant whenever such conduct and declarations tend to shed light on his motives and intention in doing the act complained of. Jones on Evidence, §§ 142, 143. Such is the general effect of these letters. It may be conceded, perhaps, that passages irrelevant and immaterial to the issues might have been segregated, but such passages would have been colorless and innocuous, and, for that reason doubtless, no discriminations were attempted by counsel for defendant. We think no error can be predicated of the admission of these letters. Hudson v. State, 61 Ala. 333; Phillips v. State, 68 Ala. 469; Jones v. State, 181 Ala. 63, 61 So. 434.

Annie Box, a witness for the state, testified that she was one of the telephone operators at Russellville; that a few minutes before the killing she set up a connection between defendant and deceased at the request of the latter; that she knew their voices, and on the occasion in question heard this much of the conversation between them: "He said he wanted her to lay low, and he said, 'Well, come on over here."' Defendant was then at his place of business, and deceased was at a drug store a short distance away. In a minute or two, as the evidence went to prove, deceased crossed the street to defendant's store, and then, as she was about to enter the store, defendant shot and killed her. The evidence in question was properly admitted on the theory, in part, on which the letters were admitted, and in other part on the theory that it tended to show preparation for the killing.

There was further objection to the testimony of this witness on the ground that the statute approved August 26, 1915 (Acts, p 321), made it a criminal offense for any owner, manager, operator or employee of any telegraph or telephone line in this state to publish or communicate in any way whatsoever the contents of any message without the consent of either...