Shelton v. State
| Decision Date | 10 May 1928 |
| Docket Number | 1 Div. 479 |
| Citation | 117 So. 8,217 Ala. 465 |
| Parties | SHELTON v. STATE. |
| Court | Alabama Supreme Court |
Appeal from Circuit Court, Mobile County; Claude A. Grayson, Judge.
Robert Shelton was convicted of murder in the first degree, and he appeals. Affirmed.
Graham A. Sullivan and J. Gordon Bennett, both of Mobile, for appellant.
Charlie C. McCall, Atty. Gen., for the State.
The defendant was indicted for the murder of his wife, Jane Shelton. He pleaded not guilty, and not guilty by reason of insanity, and was found guilty of murder in the first degree and sentenced to death by electrocution.
The woman was found dead in her bed at home, with her head badly beaten up--bruised, lacerated, and bloody--apparently by severe blows from a heavy instrument, and a bloody oak stave was found in the yard. Furthermore, it was shown by competent medical testimony that those wounds were sufficient to cause death.
The corpus delicti must of course be shown independently of the confession of the accused; that is, the state must show not only the fact of a victim's death, but also that death was caused by the criminal agency of another. 30 C.J. 284, § 529; Pearce v. State, 14 Ala.App. 120, 72 So. 213; Ducett v. State, 186 Ala. 34, 36, 65 So. 351. This requirement is satisfied when it appears that death was not the result of accident or natural causes, or of suicide. 30 C.J. 287, § 531; Parsons v. State, 179 Ala. 23, 60 So. 864; Saulsberry v. State, 178 Ala. 16, 21, 59 So. 476; Stubbs v. State (Miss.) 114 So. 827.
The corpus delicti was here established beyond the possibility of a doubt by the physical condition of the victim's body and the defendant's confession that he killed her with the oak stave was properly received. The fact that it was reduced to writing by another person was no objection to its admissibility; it appearing that it embodied the substance of the defendant's statements, and was voluntarily approved and signed by him as correct.
In proving threats made by the defendant against the deceased it was not necessary to predicate the particular time of their making, nor the place and circumstances, though, of course such matters may be properly shown as affecting the weight to be given to the threats. Pate v. State, 94 Ala. 14, 10 So. 665; Griffin v. State, 90 Ala. 596, 8 So. 670. Moreover, there was no objection to the evidence for want of such specifications; the general objection not being sufficient. The trial court did not err in allowing the state's witness to testify that the defendant made such threats in February before the killing in July, and that he had been making them "for the last two or three years."
That the defendant told his brother about his son's stealing...
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... ... several years prior to the time of the alleged killing, were ... competent, as tending to show malice on the part of the ... defendant toward his wife. Commonwealth v. Holmes, ... 157 Mass. 233, 32 N.E. 6, 34 Am.St.Rep. 270; Shelton v ... State, 217 Ala. 465, 117 So. 8; Rector v ... State, 11 Ala.App. 333, 66 So. 857; Walker v ... State, 85 Ala. 7, 4 So. 686, 7 Am.St.Rep. 17; ... Pulliam v. State, 88 Ala. 1, 6 So. 839; 30 C.J. 189 ... The ... State introduced the evidence of Alf Ball, deceased father ... ...
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