Lundon v. State

• Decision Date: 17 January 1941
• Citation: 145 Fla. 470,199 So. 755
• Parties: LUNDON v. STATE.
• Court: Florida Supreme Court

199 So. 755

145 Fla. 470

LUNDON v. STATE.

Florida Supreme Court

January 17, 1941

Rehearing Denied Feb. 3, 1941.

En Banc.

Error to Circuit Court, Alachua County; A. Z. Adkins, Judge.

Ruffie Lundon was convicted of murder in the first degree, without recommendation to mercy, and he brings error.

Judgment affirmed.

BROWN C.J., dissenting.

COUNSEL Scruggs & Johnston and H. H. McDonald, all of Gainesville, for plaintiff in error.

George Couper Gibbs, Atty. Gen., and William Fisher, Jr., Asst Atty. Gen., for defendant in error.

OPINION

CHAPMAN Justice.

On January 9, 1939, Ruffie Lundon was, by a grand jury of Alachua County, Florida, indicted for the crime of murder in the first degree in the unlawful killing of James Robinson on the 29th day of November, 1938.He was duly arraigned and on the 10th day of January, 1939, entered a plea of not guilty and shortly thereafter was placed on trial and by a jury convicted of murder in the first degree, without recommendation to mercy.A motion for a new trial was made and denied and the defendant immediately thereafter was sentenced to death by electrocution.From said judgment of conviction an appeal has been perfected to this Court.

The plaintiff in error by his brief poses seven questions to be decided by this court.While these questions, or either thereof, as presented, are not abandoned by counsel, when the cause was heard on oral argument before the court much of the argument was confined to the questions of the sufficiency of the evidence to sustain the verdict and to the error of the court's ruling on the admission and rejection of testimony.

The testimony shows that the defendant and the deceased, James Robinson, and his wife, Vernon Robinson, were at the home of Robert Wincher, who lived in the same section of the City of Gainesville as the deceased.There is a dispute in the testimony as to whether or not the deceased and wife rode from their home with the defendant in the latter's car to the home of Wincher.The five persons were around the Wincher home when Vernon Robinson, wife of the deceased James Robinson, went from the living room of the Wincher home to the kitchen on the pretext of getting a drink of water, and was followed by the defendant.What occurred in the kitchen between Vernon Robinson and the deceased in the Wincher kitchen is in conflict.Vernon Robinson and the defendant when on the stand as witnesses gave contradictory versions, but friction arose between deceased and the defendant over what occurred when the defendant and the wife of the deceased were in the kitchen.The parties here are colored people.

Vernon Robinson and the deceased, after a separation, had resumed cohabitation as husband and wife approximately thirty days prior to the death of James Robinson.Vernon Robinson visited the wife of the defendant and the latter made an effort to 'date'Vernon Robinson during the time of her separation from her husband.After the 'occurrence' in the kitchen and an exchange of words between the defendant and the deceased, the defendant left the Wincher home, but a few minutes thereafter returned with a single-barrel shotgun, when Robert Wincher undertook to disarm him, and Wincher had a pistol.During the tussle between the deceased and Wincher over the shotgun, Wincher's pistol was discharged and his wife sustained thereby a wound in the foot.

Medical aid was necessary and an effort was made to take Nettie Wincher to a physician.James Robinson and Vernon left the Wincher home and were walking down the street in the direction of their home, as is stated, for the purpose of getting their car with which to take Nettie Wincher to a physician, when the defendant appeared driving a Model A Ford car; he stopped it suddenly and approached the Robinsons with a pistol, when James Robinson ran from the scene and the defendant fired at him and the ball penetrated his body from the rear above one of his hips, and Robinson fell to the ground and later it was discovered that he was dead.The defendant returned to Vernon Robinson and struck her about the head with his pistol.

Vernon Robinson testified that when she and her husband were riding in the defendant's car from her home to the Wincher home, she observed a shotgun and a pistol in Ruffie Lundon's car.This statement is strongly corroborated by the fact that after the dispute arose in the Wincher home, the defendant left and in about five minutes returned with a shotgun, and at the time his car was near the Wincher home.The pistol was offered in evidence and the shells were removed therefrom some time after the shooting and one empty shell was found in the pistol.The defendant had been hunting that afternoon and had the shotgun and the pistol on the hunt.

There is no reasonable explanation appearing in the testimony for the defendant to go to the Wincher home or the Robinson home after the afternoon's hunt, around 8:00 or 9:00 o'clock, armed with a shotgun and a pistol.There is no credible reason advanced for the defendant's attitude toward the deceased's wife in the Wincher home.The testimony reveals no quarrels or disputes between the parties until the defendant followed the wife of the deceased to the kitchen in the Wincher home, except when the deceased and the defendant sometime during the evening had an exchange of words about the father of the deceased at one time being in the employ of the defendant.

It is settled law that when the record discloses sufficient testimony from which all the essential elements of a crime may legally have been found and there is nothing in the record to show that the jury was influenced by considerations other than the testimony, then the conclusions or findings of the jury on the conflicts or disputes in the testimony should be an appellate court be sustained.See...