Keeler v. State, 40024

• Decision Date: 19 December 1955
• Docket Number: No. 40024,40024
• Parties: Edgar KEELER v. STATE of Mississippi.
• Court: Mississippi Supreme Court

Page 153

84 So.2d 153

226 Miss. 199

Edgar KEELER v. STATE of Mississippi.

No. 40024.

Supreme Court of Mississippi.

Dec. 19, 1955.

Allan Edwards, Jackson, for appellant.

J. P. Coleman, Atty. Gen., by Wm. E. Cresswell, Asst. Atty. Gen., for appellee.

HOLMES, Justice.

The appellant was indicted and tried in the Circuit Court of the First Judicial District of Hinds County for the murder of Louis Hutchins, a merchant who operated a men's clothing store on North Farish Street in the City of Jackson. He confessed the killing, but entered a plea of not guilty by reason of insanity. No point was made that he was insane at the time of the trial, and he so informed the court through his counsel at the outset of the trial. His sole defense was that he was insane at the time of the commission of the act to the extent that he was unable to appreciate the nature of his act and to distinguish between right and wrong. The jury found him guilty as charged, and he was sentenced to suffer the penalty of death. From the judgment of conviction, he prosecutes this appeal.

The only issue presented on this appeal is whether or not the appellant, at the time he killed the deceased, possessed the mental capacity to understand and appreciate the nature of his act and to distinguish between right and wrong. In view of the single issue presented we need state only generally the facts as disclosed by the undisputed evidence.

On the morning of January 28, 1955, the deceased was alone in his store. The appellant entered, and after some preliminary conversation with the deceased about the purchase of a suit of clothes and a pair of shoes, violently assaulted the deceased, knocking him down and unmercifully beating him and kicking him about the head and face, and smashing his head against the concrete floor, rendering his face and head a bloody mass of wounds, bruises, and lacerations, some of which extended to the skull bone, causing areas of hemorrhage in the brain, and resulting in his immediate death. The appellant then dragged the body of the deceased to the back of the store, leaving a trail of blood on the floor. He left the lifeless form of the deceased on the floor with his head and one hand close to a gas heater which was burning full blast. The offensive odor of burning hair and burning flesh was detected by the first person who thereafter entered the store and discovered the crime.

Appellant's hands, trousers and shoes were spattered with blood. He went into the washroom of the store and washed his hands. He then took all of the paper money out of the cash drawer and removed the deceased' wallet from his pocket, later taking the money from the wallet and throwing the wallet in a trash can. He took from the store a pair of rust colored pants, a pair of shoes, and an overcoat. He put the overcoat on as he left the store to conceal the blood on his clothing. He returned to his place of employment and changed his trousers and washed the blood from his shoes. He threw his bloody clothing in a trash bin. Later, when he went home to lunch, he changed his socks, which were also boody. The coat and shoes were later found in the appellant's room. Some six months later, when he was arrested as a suspect in connection with other offenses which the police were investigating, he made a free and voluntary confession of the crime, relating it in the minutest details. He later went with the police to the scene of the crime and re-enacted it. The next day he repeated his confession in the presence of witnesses of known integrity and veracity.

No preliminary proof was taken on the question of the appellant's sanity or insanity. As heretofore stated, he announced to the court that no point was being made that he was insane at the time of the trial. His trial commenced, therefore, with the presumption that he was sane. Waycaster v. State, 185 Miss. 25, 187 So. 205.

In Williams v. State, 205 Miss. 515, 39 So.2d 3, 6, the Court, speaking of the presumption of sanity, said: 'It is also true that this presumption of sanity will be sufficient to sustain the burden resting on the state of proof of sanity on the part of the defendant at the time of the commission of the act charged, if defendant offers no testimony to meet the presumption sufficient to raise, out of the evidence in the case, a reasonable doubt of the defendant's sanity at the time he committed the act.'

In Cunningham v. State, 56 Miss. 269, the Court also said: 'Every man is presumed to be sane, and, in the absence of testimony not engendering a reasonable doubt of sanity, no evidence on the subject need be offered; but whenever the question of sanity is raised and put in issue by such facts, proven on either side, as engender such doubt, it devolves upon the State to remove it and to establish the sanity of the prisoner to the satisfaction of the jury beyond all reasonable doubt arising out of the evidence in the case.'

To meet the presumption of appellant's sanity at the time of the commission of the act charged, the appellant offered and introduced the testimony of his stepmother, Lelia Keeler, his father, Ernest Keeler, and four other witnesses who were acquaintances of the appellant. These witnesses, with the exception of Cleveland O'Bannon, testified that in their opinion the appellant was insane. They based their opinion upon the fact that the appellant, after his return from Parchman where he was serving a sentence and from which he was on parole, appeared absent-minded and queer, and was unresponsive when attempts were made to engage him in conversation. One of these witnesses, William Lowe, said that he thought that the appellant knew the difference between right and wrong. The witness Cleveland O'Bannon expressed no opinion as to the sanity or...