Kirkland v. Allendale County

• Decision Date: 26 June 1924
• Docket Number: 11535.
• Citation: 123 S.E. 648,128 S.C. 541
• Parties: KIRKLAND v. ALLENDALE COUNTY.
• Court: South Carolina Supreme Court

123 S.E. 648

128 S.C. 541

KIRKLAND v. ALLENDALE COUNTY.

No. 11535.

Supreme Court of South Carolina

June 26, 1924

Appeal from Common Pleas Circuit Court of Allendale County; J. K Henry, Judge.

Action by Lillian B. Kirkland, administratrix of the estate of Edward Kirkland, deceased, against Allendale County.From a judgment entered on a directed verdict, in favor of plaintiff, defendant appeals.Affirmed.

R. P Searson, of Allendale, for appellant.

James E. Davis, of Barnwell, for respondent.

MARION J.

The presiding judge, Hon. J. K. Henry, directed a verdict for the plaintiff in an action against Allendale county, to recover exemplary damages in the sum of $2,000, for the lynching of the plaintiff's intestate, Edward Kirkland.The appeal questions the correctness of that ruling upon grounds which are, in substance, embraced in the contention that the evidence was reasonably susceptible of other inferences than that the death of plaintiff's intestate ensued as a proximate result of "lynching at the hands of a mob."

The appellant, in argument, states that the following facts are undisputed: On October 24, 1921, Edward Kirkland, a negro, shot and killed Mr. Eugene Walker, a prominent white citizen, on the streets of Appleton.In attempting to escape, Kirkland was shot in the knee by Mr. R H. Walker, a cousin of the deceased, who saw Kirkland shoot Mr. Eugene Walker, and who had pursued Kirkland to the edge of the town of Appleton Shortly after Kirkland was thus arrested, the sheriff of the county arrived on the scene and found Kirkland's leg "pretty badly torn up," and bleeding freely from the wound inflicted by Mr. R. H. Walker.The sheriff, accompanied by R. H. Walker and a Mr. Jones, then carried Kirkland by a roundabout route to Gifford, a station on the Seaboard Air Line Railway in Hampton county.There the sheriff, with his prisoner, boarded the train for Columbia.It was necessary to pass through Fairfax, in Allendale county.At Fairfax a number of masked men boarded the train, took the prisoner, and carried him by automobile back to Appleton.That night at Appleton, about 8 o'clock, a negro lodge building was burned, and from the ruins next day a charred unrecognizable body, with a wire cable around the neck, was taken out and buried.

We think the evidence establishes, to the exclusion of any other reasonable inference, the following additional facts: That when Kirkland was taken by the mob from the train at Fairfax he was alive, despite the fact that during the several hours he had been in the custody of the high sheriff of the county he had been given no medical or first aid attention; that the charred body taken from the ruins of the negro lodge building, burned about eight o'clock in the evening, following the taking of Kirkland in the afternoon at Fairfax, was the corpse of Edward Kirkland; and that from the time of the taking of Kirkland, alive, at Fairfax until the hour of the burning of the lodge building, he was in the hands of the mob.

But, conceding that the death of Kirkland ensued after he was taken from the train at Fairfax and while he was in the custody of the mob, appellant says there was evidence tending to establish that his death was caused by the gunshot wound inflicted by R. H. Walker, in making a lawful arrest, and not by any act or omission of the lynching party.The sheriff testified that when he put Kirkland on the train at Gifford he expected him to die in a few hours.R. H. Walker testified that he saw Kirkland lying in the foot of an automobile after he had been brought back from Fairfax to Appleton; that he did not know whether he was dead or not; that he was still bleeding, and that he saw no signs of life.F. H. Boyd, a physician, testified that he saw Kirkland in an automobile, about 4 o'clock in the afternoon, at Appleton; that he was then breathing 4 or 5 times to the minute, and that he thought he could live possibly an hour.W. R. Johns testified that he saw Kirkland in the automobile at Appleton about 4 o'clock in the afternoon, and that there were "no signs of life in him by feeling of the body."Since the lodge building was not burned until 8 o'clock, appellant contends that the foregoing evidence is readily susceptible of the inference of fact that Kirkland was dead when put in the building which was burned, and that his death was the proximate result of the gunshot wound lawfully inflicted, and not of any "lynching."Hence appellant contends as a matter of law that the jury were entitled to find that this was not such a case of "lynching when death ensues" as would render the county liable, and that the trial judge erred in not submitting the case to the jury.

The language of the constitutional provision (article 6, § 6), and of the statute enacted in conformity therewith (section 5601, vol. 3, Code 1922), is as follows:

"In all cases of lynching when death ensues, the county where such lynching takes place shall, without regard to the conduct of the officers, be liable in exemplary damages," etc.

Since the statute does not purport to cover any broader field than the self-executing provision of the Constitution, in so far as the question here involved is one of construction, it is to be resolved by applicable rules of constitutional construction.That it is a fundamental canon of construction that a Constitution should receive a liberal interpretation, especially with respect to provisions which were designed to promote the security and safeguard the liberty of the citizen is well settled.6 R. C. L.p. 49, § 44.That the salutary object of this constitutional provision was to promote, through the means prescribed, the observance of certain other provisions of the constitutional charter, guaranteeing the citizen against deprivation of life, liberty, or property without due process of law, etc., is not open to question.SeeBrown v. Orangeburg,55 S.C. 45, 32 S.E. 764, 44 L. R. A. 734.Another familiar general principle of interpretation of Constitutions is that a provision should be construed in the light of the history of the times in which it was framed, and with due regard to the evil it was intended to remedy, so as to give it effective operation and suppress the mischief at which it was aimed.6 R. C. L. 50, 51, §§ 45, 46;seeBrown v. Orangeburg, supra.In the historical aspect the nature of the evil against which this constitutional provision was leveled requires no comment.Applying the foregoing general principles of interpretation, this provision, as we apprehend, should receive a liberal interpretation to the end that the remedy prescribed to check...