Nair v. State, 30999
| Decision Date | 18 May 1976 |
| Docket Number | No. 30999,30999 |
| Citation | 226 S.E.2d 61,236 Ga. 892 |
| Parties | Fleming NAIR, Jr. v. The STATE. |
| Court | Georgia Supreme Court |
Saul, Blount & Avrett, Percy J. Blount, Augusta, for appellant.
Richard E. Allen, Dist. Atty., Augusta, Arthur K. Bolton, Atty. Gen., B. Dean Grindle, Jr., Asst. Atty. Gen., Atlanta, for appellee.
On the evening of October 23, 1973, Mr. Frank Otis, an insurance salesman, left his home to collect his weekly premiums from his customers. His badly beaten body was found in a soybean field two days later. The defendant, Fleming Nair, Jr., was arrested on January 18, 1974, in Miami, Florida, charged and convicted in Burke County of Otis' murder and robbery, and now files this appeal. He objects to the sufficiency of the evidence, to the charge by the court on admissions and flight, and to the admissibility of certain physical evidence. We affirm.
1. Enumerations of error one, two and three allege the general grounds. Although the evidence is admittedly circumstantial, its weight is overwhelming. On the evening Otis disappeared, Nair and his wife were seen mopping their kitchen. Traces of blood were found on the walls, on a door bar, and on several sheets in Nair's room, and several pools of blood were noted outside the back door in addition to a mark, as if something heavy had been dragged across the yard. A key, nail clippers and flashlight belonging to Otis were also found in the home. Otis' car, located several yards from his body, had a pool of blood in it as well as a butcher knife belonging in Nair's kitchen. A nearby pond revealed Otis' collection book, which indicated a visit to Nair's home that day, an extension cord to a washing machine in Nair's room and the victim's tie and glasses. Blood stained blankets were discovered among Nair's personal effects in Augusta, where Nair and his wife had moved the day after Otis disappeared. All of the blood was proved to be human by the state crime laboratory and typed as International Blood Group O. These enumerations of error relating to the sufficiency of the evidence thus have no merit.
2. In Nair's fourth enumeration, he alleges that the court erred in charging the law of admissions when no incriminating statement was made by him. At trial, the state elaborately questioned without objection the sheriff who had arrested Nair as to the voluntariness of his statement during both a Jackson v. Denno hearing and again before the jury. The court's charge on admissions was as follows: 'An alleged statement by the defendant was admitted in evidence . . . You should consider with great caution the evidence of any admission . . . The jury may believe admissions or incriminating statements in whole or in part, believing that which they find to be true and rejecting that which they find to be untrue.' Nair contends that this amounted to a statement by the court that he had made an admission. We disagree. The charge...
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