Rakestraw v. State
| Decision Date | 26 June 1924 |
| Docket Number | 6 Div. 72. |
| Parties | RAKESTRAW ET AL. v. STATE. |
| Court | Alabama Supreme Court |
Appeal from Circuit Court, Cullman County; James E. Horton, Jr. Judge.
Albert and Jim Rakestraw were convicted of murder in the second degree, and appeal. Reversed and remanded.
Brown & Griffith and F. E. St. John, all of Cullman, for appellants.
Harwell G. Davis, Atty. Gen., for the State.
Albert and Jim Rakestraw were convicted of murder in the second degree, for that they killed Jesse Nelson by cutting him with a knife. The Rakestraw and Nelson families lived on adjoining farms. On the afternoon of the killing the Rakestraw family and two or three friends were out under the trees in the yard, most of them engaged in a game of rook. There was a "scope of woods" on the Nelson farm which extended up to the line between the two. This wood lay back from the road and was between 300 and 400 yards from each of the dwelling houses. During the afternoon the mother of these defendants, a married sister, Mrs. Blackwelder, and Lola Rakestraw, the wife of the defendant Albert, went down into the wood, as had been the custom of the Rakestraw people for some years, to gather some brush brooms with which to sweep the yard. The two younger women were quite young, one of them about 18, the other about 16, years of age. Mrs. Blackwelder was 8 months gone with child, or perhaps it would be better to say that defendants offered to prove the fact more than once. Pretty soon, according to some of the evidence, the deceased, Jesse Nelson, was observed from the Rakestraw yard to go from the Nelson house in the direction of the wood, and shortly thereafter the Rakestraw women were heard screaming and seen coming out of the wood toward the Rakestraw house. The screams of the women, cries of distress, were heard at both the Rakestraw and the Nelson homes-were testified to by witnesses for state and defendants. Defendants and their younger brother-indicted with them, but acquitted-ran down to the women. Mrs. Nelson, mother of deceased, with several younger children also went toward the wood, arriving at intervals, some before and some after the difficulty in which Jesse lost his life. Lola Rakestraw, according to evidence for defendants, was much dishevelled, her clothes were torn she had lost one of her shoes, her limbs were lacerated, she was bleeding at the mouth, and she was crying, Mrs. Rakestraw, the mother, upon meeting her sons told them that Jesse Nelson had assaulted her daughter-in-law. Thereupon the three defendants ran immediately toward deceased, who was on his side of the wire fence dividing the farms, and in the rencounter which straightway followed Jesse Nelson was cut to death. The foregoing is not a complete statement of all the tendencies of the evidence-some of which tended, how persuasively it is not for the court to say, to establish a case more favorable to defendants-but will suffice to make sufficiently clear the questions to which we shall refer.
Mancel Nelson, a young brother of deceased, who started in the direction taken by deceased before the screams were heard, being interrogated by the state, testified that his brother, the deceased, told the women that he was not going to hurt them, that he just wanted them to get off the land. On cross-examination this witness, referring to the same occasion, said:
Substantially the same process was followed, with the same result, in the case of the witness Charlie Nelson, another of the Nelson children. This testimony introduced on behalf of the prosecution had a very clear tendency to prejudice the defense, for that it went to show that Lola Rakestraw had no just cause of complaint against deceased, and thus paved the way to an inference that the Rakestraw women were...
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