Jeffords v. State

• Decision Date: 15 July 1926
• Docket Number: 5421.
• Citation: 134 S.E. 169,162 Ga. 573
• Parties: JEFFORDS v. STATE.
• Court: Georgia Supreme Court

134 S.E. 169

162 Ga. 573

JEFFORDS v. STATE.

No. 5421.

Supreme Court of Georgia

July 15, 1926

Syllabus by the Court.

On the trial of a man for the homicide of his sister-in-law, growing out of a difficulty in which her husband also was killed by the accused, evidence tending to show a previous difficulty between the accused and the husband (although such difficulty occurred several months prior to homicide), and the existence of bad blood between them, was admissible as tending to show malice, intent, or motive on the part of the accused in killing the deceased.

The criticisms upon the judge's instructions to the jury on the subject of dying declarations are not meritorious.

Omission in the absence of an appropriate request, to charge the jury on the law of circumstantial evidence was no error requiring a reversal; the conviction not depending entirely on circumstantial evidence.

The evidence supports the verdict.

Error from Superior Court, Ware County; Harry D. Reed, Judge.

R. R Jeffords was convicted of murder, and he brings error. Affirmed.

Jas. R Thomas & Son, of Jesup, for plaintiff in error.

A. B Spence, Sol. Gen., of Waycross, Geo. M. Napier, Atty. Gen., and T. R. Gress, Asst. Atty. Gen., for the State.

HINES J.

The defendant was indicted for the murder of his sister-in-law. He was found guilty by the jury trying him, with a recommendation. He moved for a new trial; the motion was overruled; and to that judgment he excepted.

1. Jessie Jeffords, a witness for the state, testified as follows:

"I recall some time in the past going with my father. We went over there. Papa was sick. We went there to kill some birds and to get some goats. Uncle Willis had sent us word that the goats were bothering him, and we went over there to get them, and we passed his brother's, R. R. Jeffords. He, R. R. Jeffords, came out and used bad language. That was on last New Year's day. We saw Uncle Rob at his house. The bridge was floating. We had started to a big bridge on account of the little one being floating. When we got near his house, he came out there using bad language-used it at Papa. He was in his yard at the time, and he (R. R. Jeffords) came out there with his knife and come up close, and Papa took his gun up and said he was going to knock him over, and he told me afterwards that is what he intended to do. I got scared and trotted the mule down the road, and so he went on into the house. I do not know what he tried to do with the knife. He came up and racked it that way [illustrating] at my father. My father had the gun to kill some birds. He had been at Bainbridge. My mother had been to the hospital there, and the water up there had made him sick, and he could not eat much, every and any thing, and Mama told him he might kill some birds over there in the field. He did not say nothing about the gun, just told him to kill the birds; that he might see some, you know, that way."

The defendant objected to the admission of this evidence, upon the grounds: (a) That it was irrelevant; (b) that it was hearsay; (c) that it was prejudicial to the defendant, being an account of a difficulty which had occurred more than a year previous; and (d) that said evidence sought to show that there were words, without threats or any difficulty, which had been uttered approximately a year before the homicide, and was offered for the sole purpose of prejudicing his case before the jury.

The state introduced evidence tending to make this case: The deceased and her husband, the latter being a brother of the defendant, went to a neighbor's to borrow some fence stretchers. When they got to the house of this neighbor, he told them to go to his barn and get the stretchers. They opened the gate leading to the barn, and put the stretchers in the vehicle which they were driving. The deceased saw the defendant coming down the road in a wagon, driving his mule in a trot. The defendant had a gun across his lap and a pistol in his hand. The deceased was standing in the wagon just outside of the gate. The defendant drove up, and, without saying a word, shot the deceased. The deceased and her husband were doing nothing to the defendant at the time. The defendant jumped from his wagon, on the left of the road, crossed the road to the right, and took cover behind some trees, from which he advanced and shot the deceased. The mule to the wagon which the deceased was driving turned swiftly to the left, and the defendant again shot the deceased in the side and back with a load of buckshot. The husband of the deceased grabbed his gun, which was in the wagon that his wife was driving, and just as he grabbed it the defendant shot and killed him. From the wounds so received the wife died the next day.

We hold that the testimony so objected to was admissible as tending to show malice, intent, or motive on the part of the accused in killing the deceased. The weight to be given to such evidence was a matter for the jury. "Express malice is that deliberate intention unlawfully to take away the life of a fellow creature, which is manifested by external circumstances capable of proof," such as previous difficulties and ancient grudges. Mitchum v. State, 11 Ga. 615, 628; Wilson v. State, 33 Ga. 207, 217; Brown v. State, 51 Ga. 502, 505; Henderson v. State, 120 Ga. 504, 506, 48 S.E. 167; Frank v. State, 141 Ga. 243, 80 S.E. 1016; Hill v. State, 148 Ga. 521, 97 S.E. 442; Williams v. State, 152 Ga. 498, 110 S.E. 286; Fairfield v. State, 155 Ga. 660, 663, 118 S.E. 395.

2. The court charged the jury as follows:

"It is for the court, in the first instance, to determine whether the preliminary proof is sufficient to admit dying declarations, but this ruling of the court is not binding upon the jury, for you must be satisfied beyond a reasonable doubt that the statement introduced as a dying declaration of the deceased was actually made by the deceased, and that she was in the article of death, and conscious of her condition at the time of making the alleged dying declaration. The rule of law upon this subject is this: Dying declarations made by any person in the article of death, who is conscious of his condition, as to the cause of his death, and the person who killed him, are admissible in a prosecution for homicide. Great

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