Smith v. State, 1 Div. 351
| Decision Date | 19 January 1950 |
| Docket Number | 1 Div. 351 |
| Parties | SMITH v. STATE. |
| Court | Alabama Supreme Court |
Sydney S. Pfleger, Mobile, for appellant.
A. A. Carmichael, Atty. Gen., and Jas. L. Screws, Asst. Atty. Gen., for the State.
Charley Smith was indicted, tried and convicted of murder in the first degree. He received the death penalty. The case comes to this court under the Automatic Appeal Act. Code 1940, Tit. 15, § 382(1) et seq.
On Sunday, July 11, 1948, at about two o'clock in the morning Alice Hyman, who lived at 1754 Limerick Street, a little traveled street in the City of Mobile, was awakened by her young daughter with whom she was sleeping. She got up and saw a cab standing in the street with the lights off in front of the house. No one was near the cab, but she heard a groan, and with the aid of her flashlight discovered a man lying in the weeds in a nearby ditch. He did not respond to her questions. So she called the police.
After their arrival the police saw to it that the unconscious man, who was Monroe Young Jackson, a taxicab driver, was placed in an ambulance and carried away. He never recovered consciousness and died of severe wounds about his head. There were seventeen major wounds on the head and many lesser wounds. His skull was crushed behind the ear and his scalp was laid bare to the skull. His nose and jaw were crushed. According to Dr. Grubbs, State Toxicologist, the wounds showed that they were inflicted by a heavy blunt instrument.
On Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday nights before the killing Charley Smith had occupied a one room house in the backyard of Alice Hyman. Upon examination of the cab by the police they found blood on the rear seat, rear door and up in the top of the upholstering. The front seat was a mass of blood. Blood was on the windshield and up over the sun visors. They found a yellow cab driver's cap lying on the front seat opposite the driver's seat, with the strap broken and the button off the cap on the floor board. They found a seaman's identification card, that is called an I.D. card. They also found a laundry check, a C.I.O. union card and a union picket card issued at Galveston, Texas. These articles were shown to Alice Hyman, who thereupon took the police to a house known as 301 Dearborn Street in the City of Mobile.
The first story of the house on Dearborn Street was occupied by a dealer in secondhand furniture and appliances. He was out of the city at the time. There were a number of stoves on the back porch. Alice Hyman, who was familiar with the place, led the police to the rear of the house and up steps to the rooms that were in a part of the attic. They then broke into the room on the right and with their flashlights found Charley Smith in bed with a woman named Margaret Myles, with whom he had been living from time to time during the previous seven months. Charley Smith had on shorts with blood on them and in a tub of water in the room were a man's clothes with blood on them. They were his clothes. In the top drawer of the dresser they found a billfold with nine dollar bills therein and also a handkerchief with small change tied up in it. On direction from Charley Smith, another billfold and a wrist watch were found in a stove on the back porch. These articles belonged to the deceased.
Charley Smith was arrested and signed a written confession to the killing. According to his statement and also according to Margaret Myles at about 7:30 of the night of the killing, she was not feeling well so she and Charley Smith went to the City Hospital where he left her. They went in a cab and she paid the fare. She did not see him again until he came to her room at about 2:30 that night.
There were no eyewitnesses to the killing. According to the statement of Charley Smith after he left the hospital about 10:00 o'clock, he went to several places including the L. & N. Station where he tried to find the brother of Margaret Myles. Not finding him, he called a taxi at about 11:30 and told the driver to take him to Limerick Street. When he reached his destination, according to his statement, he asked the cab driver 'How much I owe you' and he said 'Give me two and a half', and I said 'Two and a half, what for?' He said 'So I hit him in the face on the right side with the bottle and he grabbed me.' Further according to his statement, he reached in the right back pocket of deceased and got his wallet and reached in his shirt pocket and got a pack of cigarettes and the rest of his money in bills and change and also a wrist watch which was in his shirt pocket.'
Just before the preliminary hearing Charley Smith stated that his written statement was correct except that he had hit the deceased with a piece of pipe. The day after the killing a piece of pipe was found in the weeds on a nearby lot with blood on it. Also there was found near it a piece of paper with blood on it. The paper came from the window of the room he had occupied on Limerick Street. He admitted that he had torn the paper loose and used it to wipe the blood off the instrument with which he hit the deceased.
Charley Smith at the time was twenty-three years of age and was a seaman who had come to Mobile from Galveston, Texas. In Texas he had served a term for burglary. He was out of work and had drawn no pay for twenty days. He was trying to draw 'some pennies' from unemployment compensation. He had served in the Navy and was taking steps to re-enlist.
According to his testimony given from the witness stand, the cab driver grabbed the defendant's wallet out of his hand. The cab driver was under the steering wheel when this occurred. According to the defendant he was on the back seat. Defendant then jumped over on the front seat and deceased hit defendant in the crotch with a pipe. Defendant then snatched the pipe from deceased and proceeded to hit deceased with the pipe.
I. After the defense had rested, the State called to the stand Bruce Etheridge who had...
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