Harvey v. State

• Decision Date: 07 July 1960
• Docket Number: No. 20919,20919
• Citation: 216 Ga. 174,115 S.E.2d 345
• Parties: William T. HARVEY v. STATE.
• Court: Georgia Supreme Court

Page 345

115 S.E.2d 345

216 Ga. 174

William T. HARVEY v. STATE.

No. 20919.

Supreme Court of Georgia.

July 7, 1960.

Aaron Kravitch, H. N. Ginsberg, Savannah, for plaintiff in error.

Andrew J. Ryan, Jr., Sol. Gen., Savannah, Eugene Cook, Atty. Gen., Rubye G. Jackson, Asst. Atty. Gen., for defendant in error.

HAWKINS, Justice.

William T. Harvey was tried in Chatham Superior Court under an indictment charging him with having murdered Organ Emerson, and the jury returned a verdict of guilty with a recommendation of mercy. To the judgment denying his motion for a new trial, based upon the general grounds and two special grounds, the defendant excepts. The special grounds (1) that the court erred in failing to charge the law and rules governing circumstantial evidence; that the case was based on circumstantial evidence, and that it was the duty of the court, in the absence of a request, to charge this principle of law; and (2) that the State's case was based on alleged admissions and confessions made by the defendant, and it was the duty of the court, under the facts in said case, even in the absence of a request, to charge that confessions must be voluntary, without hope of reward or fear of punishment, and that admissions should be scanned with care.

The wife of the deceased, testified for the State, that she and her husband resided at 805 Wheaton Street, Savannah, Chatham County, Georgia, on July 25, 1959, on which date her husband and their next-door neighbor, Plantee Brown, were discussing the actions of the latter's child or children, and in which conversation the defendant intervened; that this resulted in an ensuing argument between the defendant and the deceased, in which each accused the other of telling a lie; that the defendant had a pistol in his hand; that, when she saw the pistol, she pushed her husband and told the defendant to 'go ahead on, and Martha [Ellerson] came out on the porch at the time, and Plantee [Brown] was trying to tell Miss Martha what it was about, and so at that time Martha said 'I don't see no sense in all this about children'; so Miss Martha went over and grabbed Harvey and told him to come on in the house. Emerson [the deceased] walked down off the porch and went on down the street.'

Martha Ellerson testified that she said, 'You are making a fuss about nothing'; that 'Harvey [the defendant] was standing up and he said to me, 'I'll kill him tonight if it's the last thing I do.''

The wife of the deceased further testified that her husband later returned home, telling her, 'I don't like what Harvey done to me'; that she tried to get her husband to go in the house, and he said he was going to sit on the parch; that she went on in the house, shut the front door, and after some fifteen or twenty minutes 'I heard Harvey at it again; I heard Harvey saying 'You tell a damn lie'; Emerson say 'you tell another lie,' and then Harvey say 'You tell a God damn lie,' and at that time I heard the gun fire and I run to the door, and as I went to open the door this officer was coming up on the porch, and when I got to Emerson the officer was to Emerson too, and Emerson was laying down with one foot under the other.'

A. W. Deal, a City Policeman, testified: 'On the night I discovered the body of this man Organ Emerson I was in the vicinity of 1105 Wheaton Street when I heard the shot; * * * I turned my car around and his wife was on the porch screaming, and that gave me the direction; I stopped the car and jumped out; the deceased was laying on the porch, and she was standing in the door screaming * * * The wrench was laying under his right leg and about this much under his left leg. As I jumped out the car and ran to the porch, she stated that the man who had done the shooting lives next door; I immediately kicked the door open...