Spann v. The State Of Ga.

• Decision Date: 31 January 1873
• Parties: ENOCH F. SPANN, plaintiff in error. v. THE STATE OF GEORGIA, defendant in error*.
• Court: Georgia Supreme Court

47 Ga. 553

ENOCH F. SPANN, plaintiff in error. v. THE STATE OF GEORGIA, defendant in error*.

Supreme Court of the State of Georgia

(Atlanta, January Term, 1873.)

(Montgomery, Judge, was providentially prevented from presiding in this case.)

Criminal law. Constitutional law. Insanity. Before Judge Clark. Webster Superior Court. May Special Term, 1872.

For the facts of this case, see the decision.

Hawkins & Guerry; W. A. Hawkins; Phil. Cook, for plaintiff in error.

C. F. Crisp, Solicitor General; C. T. Goode, for the State.

WARNER, Chief Justice.

1. The defendant was indicted and tried for the crime of murder, at a special term of the Superior Court held in the county of Webster. On the trial, the jury found the defendant guilty. A motion was made for a new trial, on the several grounds specified and set forth in the record, which was overruled by the Court, and the defendant excepted. The Act of the General Assembly authorizing the Judges of the Superior Courts to hold a special term of the Court for the trial of criminal offenses, is constitutional: Grinad and Benton, v. The State, 34 Georgia Reports, 271. In the view which we have taken of this case, the several exceptions taken to the proceedings on the trial were not material, and must be controlled by the legal effect of the newly discovered evidence in relation to the insanity of the defendant, which is the main question in the case. The evidence in the record discloses the undoubted fact that the defendant and Eberhart, a girl living *in the house with him, killed his wife by strangling, and breaking her neck with a rope when she was lying on her bed asleep; that after they had killed her they heated water and attempted to obliterate the marks of the rope around the neck of the dead woman, but the more they washed it the plainer the marks appeared; that then the parties fled to the State of Alabama, were pursued, and defendant was found in Coffee county, choping cotton in the cotton patch of one Harris. When defendant was arrested by those who pursued him he asked them what authority they had to arrest him out of the State.

The motion for a new trial in this case is based mainly on newly discovered evidence, since the trial, of the defendant's insanity, and the affidavits of several doctors have been procured who have examined him since the trial, and some of whom knew him before the trial, and they give it as their opinion that the defendant is afflicted with moral insanity. There are also...