Quarles v. State

• Decision Date: 22 May 1967
• Docket Number: No. 44456,44456
• Citation: 199 So.2d 58
• Parties: Dotson QUARLES v. STATE of Mississippi.
• Court: Mississippi Supreme Court

Page 58

199 So.2d 58

Dotson QUARLES v. STATE of Mississippi.

No. 44456.

Supreme Court of Mississippi.

May 22, 1967.

J. W. Kellum, Sumner, Joseph L. Tennyson, Charleston, for appellant.

Joe T. Patterson, Atty. Gen., by Guy N. Rogers, Asst. Atty. Gen, Jackson, for appellee.

SMITH, Justice:

Dotson Quarles was indicted for the murder of Olivia Collins. He was tried in the Circuit Court of Tallahatchie County, convicted of manslaughter, and sentenced to serve a term of twenty years in the penitentiary. From that conviction and sentence this appeal has been prosecuted.

On January 31, 1966, Olivia Collins was found dead in a bedroom of her home. Bruises upon her body indicated that she had been subjected to a brutal beating. However, a pathologist, following an autopsy, stated that the fatal would had been inflicted by a sharp instrument that penetrated the chest, the immediate cause of death having been loss of blood. Proof was introduced that freezing temperatures had prevailed in the locality for a number of days preceding the discovery of the body, which had frozen, and it was the opinion of the pathologist that death had occurred some twelve hours before the body became frozen.

On the day that the body was found, Quarles went to Chicago, although there is no evidence that he knew of its discovery.

A great deal of blood was splattered all about the bedroom where the body was found, the furniture in the room was in great disorder, and indications were that the victim had put up a violent struggle for life. There was also evidence that she had engaged in sexual intercourse shortly before death.

The first, and in fact only, contact between appellant Quarles and decedent, established by direct evidence, occurred on January 22, 1966. On that date, he had been asked by one Williams, a taxi driver, to a accompany him to decedent's home to help 'fill a gas bottle' for her. Williams had been telephoned by decedent who had asked him to come 'fill her gas box,' it appearing that she needed assistance in obtaining butane gas for her stove. As it turned out, when Williams and Guarles reached decedent's home, she told them she had been unable to get the money to purchase the gas. Williams and Quarles went inside the house when invided by decedent to come in. They stayed only a few minutes and left about 12:00 noon. During the course of the conversation relative to her inability to get money to buy gas, decedent stated that she expected to receive a welfare check four days later, on January 26. It was established that this check did arrive at the post office on that date, but never was picked up.

Williams testified for the prosecution and stated that he and Quarles went no farther into the house than the living room, and 'that was the first room.'

The principal circumstance in evidence, which the State argues connects Quarles with the crime, is that a hat, similar to a hat that Quarles was said to have worn, was found lying by the door in a hall to the house. A deputy sheriff testified, '* * * that hat was laying in a little hall, the little hall that ran from the door. There is one room to the right and one room to the left, and that hat was lying right in that hall by the door.' It was not in the bedroom where the murder was committed, nor did it have any of the blood upon it with which nearly everything else in the bedroom was splattered. Nevertheless, in a statement taken from Quarles by the police in Chicago, he is quoted as having said that he had 'lost a hat in Mississippi' of the same kind, color, and make, and with the same Chicago retailer's brand in it. An objection to the introduction of this statement, upon the ground that it was the result of duress and was not voluntary, was overruled after a hearing upon that issue. Several witnesses were placed on the stand by the State who said that the hat was similar, but none could identify it as that worn by Quarles. Quarles also disputed the accuracy of some of the things attributed to him in the statement.

Proof was introduced that the victim had blood type O, a common type, and that the same type was found to be on the inside (but not on the outside) of some trousers found in Quarles' possession in Chicago, and on his pocket knife, when he was arrested in Chicago on February 6, 1966. Quarles' blood was type B. Also, when arrested, it was discovered that one of Quarles' fingers had two small cuts on the end of it and that he had a bruised eye. A Chicago policeman testified that Quarles first gave him a wrong name and that when he said to Quarles that he, Quarles, 'Had killed that woman down there' that Quarles had 'hung his head' and had not replied.

Photographs appear in the record of the backs of Quarles' hands, purporting to show healed scratches, which, it is suggested, were made by decedent in the struggle with her assailant.

There was some further circumstantial evidence, but the above items constitute the principal circumstances upon which the State relies to support the conviction.

At the conclusion of the State's case, a motion to exclude the testimony and find Quarles not guilty was overruled. Quarles then put on witnesses to account for the cut finger, bruised eye, and trip to Chicago. This testimony was not rebutted by the State, and was not so intrinsically unreasonable as to be unbelievable. And while Quarles' explanation of how blood came to be on the inside of the trousers may be characterized as not wholly satisfactory, it is, possible, at least, as reasonable as the State's theory that he committed this bloody murder while wearing them, but got no blood on the outside.

When both sides had rested and closed, a motion for a directed verdict of not guilty was overruled and a verdict of manslaughter was returned by the jury. A motion for...