Richardson v. State
| Decision Date | 10 October 1950 |
| Docket Number | No. 17221,17221 |
| Parties | RICHARDSON v. STATE. |
| Court | Georgia Supreme Court |
Syllabus by the Court.
1. A confession of guilt, freely and voluntarily made by the accused, is direct evidence of the highest character and sufficient to authorize a verdict of guilty on a charge of murder, when corroborated by proof of the corpus delicti. Tested by this rule, the verdict in the instant case is abundantly supported by evidence, and, accordingly, the general grounds of the motion for new trial are without merit.
2. A ground of a motion for new trial complaining of the court's failure to charge on the law of manslaughter is too vague and indefinite to present any question for determination by this court.
3. It is declared in the Code, § 26-403, that drunkenness shall not be an excuse for any crime or misdemeanor unless it was occasioned by the fraud, artifice, or contrivance of another person for the purpose of having a crime perpetrated. In the circumstances of this case, a failure to charge on the subject of drunkenness as an excuse for crime was not error. Voluntary intoxication is no excuse for crime.
Jimmy Richardson was indicted in Crisp County for the murder of Grace Burston. He was tried, convicted of the offense charged, and sentenced to be electrocuted. He excepts to the judgment overruling his amended motion for new trial.
The State's evidence tended to establish the following facts: The accused and the deceased had not been 'living together' for about four months prior to her death. They had 'quarreled,' and he had arranged with 'another woman to do his cooking.' On his invitation, the deceased went to his home on the night of April 14, 1950, to read some telegrams. No one saw her alive afterwards. The accused was questioned about her absence by the Sheriff of Crisp County, the City of Cordele's Chief of Police, and an agent of the Georgia Bureau of Investigation. He first denied any knowledge of her whereabouts, but later stated, freely and voluntarily, that he killed her at his home in the City of Cordele on the night of April 14, 1950, by first striking her on the head with a stick of wood and later with a smoothing iron. He then mutilated her body with his pocket knife, burned part of it in his fireplace; but, not being able to dispose of it completely that way, he put the burned body in a burlap bag, hauled it by truck some 12 to 14 miles away, and threw it in the river. He agreed to, and voluntarily went with the officers to the river and pointed out the place where he threw it in. Her decomposed and mutilated body was recovered from the river a short distance down stream from the place pointed out by the accused, and was positively identified as the remains of Grace Burston by a physician witness, who testified that he had personally known her. The accused told the investigating officers that he did not know why he killed her; that he had not planned to; and that there had not been any fight between them. The officers testified that the accused when taken into custody had a bruised place on his forehead, but they and another witness for the State testified that he told them that he hurt his head on a door. The sheriff also testified that the accused told him voluntarily that he was drinking, but not drunk, at the time of the killing; that the deceased was not drinking; that she did not hit him; and that he offered no excuse or justification for the homicide.
The defendant offered no testimony, but in his statement to the jury said:
O. E. Scott, Jr., Cordele, Davis & Friedin, Vienna, for plaintiff in error.
Harvey L. Jay, Sol. Gen., Fitzgerald, Eugene Cook, Atty. Gen., J. R. Parham, Asst. Atty. Gen., for defendant in error.
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