Lewis v. State

Decision Date23 January 1930
Docket Number1 Div. 558.
Citation125 So. 802,220 Ala. 461
PartiesLEWIS ET AL. v. STATE.
CourtAlabama Supreme Court

Appeal from Circuit Court, Clarke County; T. J. Bedsole, Judge.

Carson Lewis, George (alias Bill) Long, and Jerry York were convicted of murder in the first degree, and they appeal. Affirmed.

Quincey W. Tucker, of Grove Hill, and Woodford Mabry, of Foley, for appellants.

Charlie C. McCall, Atty. Gen., and J. W. Brassell and Wm. P. Cobb Asst. Attys. Gen., for the State.

SAYRE J.

Defendants appellants, were convicted of murder in the first degree and sentenced to imprisonment for life. The theory of the state was that deceased, Christopher C. Coffee, of Mobile, having left his companions at a hunting camp and walking alone through the woods, was, to state the matter very briefly, by Percy Lang, since deceased, and these defendants killed robbed, and his body burned. There was evidence going to show that persons afterwards engaged in hunting for Coffee, and ignorant of his fate, were directed by a witness, who had seen a part of the transaction which resulted in Coffee's death, to a place in the woods where, in or under a "fire heap," they found unconsumed fragments of bone and clothing, trinkets, and articles identified as having been worn by the deceased. The court refused to defendants the charge which we have marked A on the margin of page 39 of the record. In this there was no error. It was, of course, incumbent upon the state to prove the guilt of the defendants beyond a reasonable doubt. But this rule of proof is predicated of the issue of guilt upon consideration of the evidence as a whole and of such parts of it as were indispensable to a verdict of guilt. Outside of the circumstance just here under consideration-i. e., the "fire heap" and its contents-there was ample evidence to establish the corpus delicti and the criminal responsibility of these defendants. The charge in question was misleading in more than one respect and was refused without error.

Charge B was contradictory of itself, misleading, and refused without error.

The proposition of charge C is untenable. The state produced an eyewitness of the killing, and upon his testimony, if accepted by the jury, a conviction was proper, even though the body of the deceased had been completely destroyed.

The state put in evidence confessions made, as the witnesses testified, by defendant Carson Lewis, to officers of the law having him in custody during the progress of his removal from the jail at Chatom, in Washington county, to Kilby prison. Proper predicate was laid, and was not, so far as the record discloses, questioned by any of the defendants. At a later stage of the trial evidence was offered to prove a similar confession by the same defendant to a deputy sheriff of Washington county, while the defendant was in his custody. Here also, as the bill of exceptions recites, "the predicate was properly laid." Both the confessions to which we have referred included statements of fact connecting these defendants with the killing of the deceased, and besides, both related to the finding of a coin, a safety pin, some large shoe eyelets, a finger ring, and some fragments of bone, identified-except as to the fragments of bone-as similar to articles upon the person of deceased when he left the hunting camp, which articles were found under a "fire heap" to which defendant Carson Lewis conducted the deputy sheriff after said defendant had been taken into custody and charged with complicity in the death of the deceased, Coffee. The court, on motion of the defendant and addressed to the entire confession, excluded that part of it made by the defendant to the deputy sheriff at Chatom, where the said defendant...

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18 cases
  • McGowan v. State
    • United States
    • Alabama Court of Criminal Appeals
    • 8 Julio 2005
    ...of the forensic anthropologist ... as he explained ... how he had found a `signature' for the murder weapon"). Cf. Lewis v. State, 220 Ala. 461, 125 So. 802 (1930) (bone fragments recovered from a fire heap were properly admitted where the testimony identified pieces of metal found with the......
  • Hurley v. State
    • United States
    • Court of Special Appeals of Maryland
    • 1 Septiembre 1984
    ...homicide convictions where no body was ever produced, but the evidence proved sufficient for proof of the corpus delicti. See State v. Lewis, 125 So. 802 (Ala.1930) (eyewitness, bone fragments found, blood splotches and stains and proof that body of deceased burned); Deering v. State, 273 A......
  • Government of Virgin Islands v. Harris
    • United States
    • U.S. Court of Appeals — Third Circuit
    • 3 Julio 1991
    ...friends or family or picked up her paycheck; there was no evidence that victim was unhappy or contemplated suicide); Lewis v. State, 220 Ala. 461, 125 So. 802 (1930) (defendant admitted to police that he and others murdered the 70 year-old victim in the woods with an ax, found with bloodsta......
  • McGowan v. State, No. CR-95-1775 (Ala. Crim. App. 12/12/2003)
    • United States
    • Alabama Court of Criminal Appeals
    • 12 Diciembre 2003
    ...of the forensic anthropologist ... as he explained ... how he had found a `signature' for the murder weapon"). Cf. Lewis v. State, 220 Ala. 461, 125 So. 802 (1930) (bone fragments recovered from a fire heap were properly admitted where the testimony identified pieces of metal found with the......
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