Shuffield v. State
| Decision Date | 25 October 1915 |
| Docket Number | 187 |
| Parties | SHUFFIELD v. STATE |
| Court | Arkansas Supreme Court |
Appeal from Hot Spring Circuit Court; W. H. Evans, Judge; reversed.
Judgment reversed and cause remanded.
H. B Means, for appellant.
The State wholly failed to prove the corpus delicti. The presumption is that the fire was either the result of accident or some providential cause. 253 Mo. 487; 98 Miss 723.
The court erred in permitting W. T. Shuffield to state to the jury that the barn was set on fire.
The appellant did not place his character in issue and hence it could not be assailed. 14 Cent. Digest, Sec. 839, p. 1487; 165 S.W. Tex. 194.
Wallace Davis, Attorney General, John P. Streepey, Assistant, and D D. Glover, for appellee.
The corpus delicti may be proven by circumstantial evidence as well as by positive evidence. 28 L. R. A. (N. S.) 538 note; 1 Okla.Crim. 307; 97 P. 1052; 155 Ala. 93; 28 L. R. A. 537; 91 Ga. 11; 16 S.E. 100; 150 Ill. 181; 28 L. R. A. (N. S.) 287.
Walter Shuffield and Walter Counts were jointly indicted for the crime of arson charged to have been committed by burning the barn of W. T. Shuffield on the 22d day of November, 1914, in Hot Spring County, Arkansas. They severed and the defendant Shuffield was convicted and from the judgment of conviction has duly prosecuted this appeal. On the trial of Shuffield the State proved a state of facts substantially as follows:
W. T. Shuffield was constable of Bismarck Township in Hot Spring County, Arkansas, and on the night of November 22, 1914, was called to a church in the township to quell a disturbance. Some one had been shooting at the church with pistols and he deputized Joe Sanders to go with him to the church. They searched all the people found at the church, including Walter Counts and the defendant, Walter Shuffield. Counts and the defendant both cursed the constable and both in effect, threatened him. Shuffield then went home and his barn was burned about twelve o'clock that night. The barn had a scuttle-hole which had been covered with corn tops and it appeared that it was set on fire at that place. An examination of the ground around the barn showed tracks made by shoes about the size of those worn by the defendant. The tracks led back to a point where two horses had been hitched, and it appeared that one of these horses had run away. The track of the other was followed and led to the residence of the mother of Walter Counts, where he resided. This track was of the same size and shape as that made by the horse of Walter Counts which he had ridden on the night before.
Joe Sanders, the man who was deputized by the constable to assist in quelling the disturbance and who helped to search the defendant and Walter Counts, had a bottom field about four miles distant from the burned barn. The tracks of the horses which led up to the place where they had been hitched near the barn the night of the fire came from the direction of Sanders' bottom field. The evidence showed that some of the corn tops which were in Sanders' bottom field were set on fire earlier in the night on the same night that the constable's barn was burned. Other evidence tended to show that the defendant and Counts rode in the direction of this bottom field when they left the church.
W. T. Shuffield aroused some of his neighbors when he discovered that his barn was on fire and one of them, on his way there, found Walter Shuffield's horse loose in the road. The next day the defendant said to this witness, "Walter Counts played hell when he turned my horse loose."
Evidence was adduced in behalf of the defendant tending to show that he was not guilty, and it is contended by his counsel that the evidence on the part of the State is not sufficient to show his guilt. Without commenting upon it, we are of the opinion that the evidence on the part of the State, if believed by the jury, was sufficient to establish the guilt of the defendant.
It is next contended that the court erred in permitting Joe Sanders to testify that the defendant burned his fence and corn tops on the night that W. T. Shuffield's barn was...
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