Jordan v. State

• Court: Georgia Court of Appeals
• Writing for the Court: WADE, J.
• Citation: Jordan v. State, 16 Ga.App. 393, 85 S.E. 455 (Ga. App. 1915)
• Decision Date: 03 June 1915
• Docket Number: 6287.
• Parties: JORDAN v. STATE.

85 S.E. 455

16 Ga.App. 393

JORDAN v. STATE.

No. 6287.

Court of Appeals of Georgia

June 3, 1915

Syllabus by the Court.

The evidence authorized the instruction given to the jury as to the law of voluntary manslaughter.

There is no merit in the one special assignment of error that the court erred in charging as to provocation by words, threats menaces, or contemptuous gestures, without sufficient explanation that the fears of a reasonable man might be aroused thereby, for neither the testimony nor the statement of the accused suggests or intimates that any words, threats or menaces, etc., had been used at the time the homicide occurred, or at any other time by the deceased to or towards the defendant. There is no reversible error where no possible injury could have resulted to the accused.

The evidence and the statement of the accused authorized the verdict of voluntary manslaughter.

Error from Superior Court, Laurens County; W. W. Larsen, Judge.

Will Jordan was convicted of voluntary manslaughter, and brings error. Affirmed.

R. Earl Camp, of Dublin, for plaintiff in error.

E. L Stephens, Sol. Gen., of Wrightsville, for the State.

WADE J.

Will Jordan was tried under an indictment for murder and was found guilty of voluntary manslaughter; his motion for a new trial was overruled, and he brought the case to this court for review. The brief of evidence discloses that one Luvenia Johns was the only witness who testified that she saw the fatal encounter between the defendant and the deceased, and her further statement that she herself, Lewis West (the deceased), Will Jordan (the accused), and the wife of the accused were the only persons present at the time of the tragedy is uncontradicted, except that the defendant, in his statement at the trial, denied her presence at the precise time the homicide occurred. According to the testimony of Luvenia Johns, West was standing on the back porch of her house when he was shot, with one foot on the ground and with one on the steps, and Will Jordan was standing "on the porch in the hallway," and Jordan's wife was standing behind Jordan; West had been at the house of the witness about a half an hour or more when he was shot, but had not been in the house; Jordan said nothing to Lewis when he shot him, nor did Lewis say anything to Jordan; the witness was standing there talking when Jordan came in the house, and Jordan's wife said he was drunk; Jordan heard his wife say that he was drunk; the witness turned around and caught Jordan in the collar, and said, "You must not come in here drunk," whereupon Jordan turned around and commenced shooting, and it appeared to the witness that he shot three times; she was holding, or tried to hold, Jordan as she thought he was drunk, and he shot across her shoulders at Lewis, who was standing behind her, "sorter down on the ground." Jordan "snatched aloose" as soon as he finished shooting, and went back in the house, and the witness never saw him afterwards until the day of the trial in 1914. The shooting occurred in 1907. She further testified that the deceased had been painting at her house and was not yet through, as he was painting the inside and putting up wall paper; that he would have been back before the day he was killed, to finish the painting, but she "had to move out of the room to give him time, and he came back to see about it, and that's the reason he was at my house"; that she did not hear the deceased say a word after he was shot, but when he was shot she heard a slight noise, and turned around and saw him fall backwards, and at that time Jordan ran "around her house and she never saw him again"; that Jordan lived just above her place, on the same street, with a vacant lot belonging to her between his house and hers, and that Jordan's wife had been at her house all the morning, until just before 9 o'clock, and West came there about 3 or 4 o'clock in the afternoon, and had been there about half an hour before the shooting took place; that West lived back of the witness' place about 100 or 150 yards, and did not come to her house except when he was working there, and that he had not been there at work in two weeks; that she "did not see any cause in the world for Will Jordan to shoot; he just shot him offhand;" that when Jordan came to her house and his wife said he was drunk, he "acted like he was falling, and she said, 'Will, you are drunk and just can walk;' she had hold of him at that time and he was pushing and shoving her; they were pushing and shoving one another, and I grabbed him"; that up to the time that Lewis was shot he had not spoken a word to Jordan's wife, and the witness did not know whether the deceased was aware that Jordan's wife was even in the house or not, as Jordan's wife was in the kitchen, cooking preserves. This testimony would perhaps tend to support a verdict for murder.

There was testimony as to the nature of the wounds, which showed that one bullet entered the body of the deceased from the front and one from the back, and there was also testimony that the death of the deceased was caused by the bullet wounds inflicted by the accused. The testimony further showed that the defendant left the county and disappeared, and that when arrested in another county, three or four years later, and while he was returning in the custody of the officer to the place where the alleged crime was committed, he threw himself out of the window of a moving train and escaped, and he was not again arrested until some years later, and that his wife disappeared about the time he did, and had not been seen in the county where the alleged crime was committed until his trial. There was evidence introduced to show the good character of the accused, and there was also evidence to the effect that the accused had, on more than one occasion and by different persons, sent messages to the deceased that he objected to visits of the deceased to his wife at his house, and there was evidence that the deceased nevertheless was seen on several occasions thereafter at the house when the accused was absent, and when no one was at home but his wife, but there was no evidence that any improper relations existed between the deceased and the wife of the accused, or that they had ever been seen in any improper or compromising situation, or in fact that she had ever been guilty of anything immoral or improper with any one. There was also evidence that the deceased was not the only man who visited the house of the accused. The statement of the accused (omitting only his tribute to himself as a law-abiding citizen of industrious habits, and his statement that he had himself told the deceased to stay away from his house, and a further statement that a deceased wife of the man whose present wife, Luvenia Johns, testified for the state, had accused West of being his wife's "sweetheart," and was the first one to arouse his suspicion) was as follows:

"I had gone to my house that day, when this occurrence happened, and I had gone there for the purpose of having my potatoes bedded or banked. I asked the old gentlemen that pulled them up the day before to come and pull them up that day, and I had gone home and gone to my door to open it, and both doors were fastened, so I goes to Mary Gallemore's next door to my house, and asked her could she tell me where my wife was, and she said, 'Yes,' she was down to Mrs. Johns,' and so I goes down there and walks to the door, and I felt that there was something wrong, after not finding her at home, and I didn't knock on the door; I opened the door and entered in, and when I entered the room door I saw something drop down near in the corner with the scarf that covered the lounge, and I walked there and snatched it up, and it was my wife, and I said, 'What are you hid for?' and about this time this woman [the Johns woman] came running in from the kitchen (her kitchen is on a little veranda that extends to the kitchen), and she ran in, and they grabbed me, both of them, one on each side of me, and she said she had my wife cook fig preserves; and I said, 'What are you trying to scrumble with me?' I said, 'She ain't cooking no fig preserves in here,' and she said, 'Come back and see,' and I heard some scrumbling behind me, and this fellow Lewis West was coming out of the door. They had got me out of the room door and was making towards me, and he had a fine chance to get out of the front door. I left the door open when I came in the house, and I saw that they had me devoured, and he came

right on to me and didn't turn until I shot him twice. I don't know whether I hit all the times or not, but he still kept on and run over me and the womans both.

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