Speegle v. State, 6 Div. 505

• Decision Date: 04 December 1973
• Docket Number: 6 Div. 505
• Citation: 286 So.2d 914,51 Ala.App. 504
• Parties: Sherrel Dean SPEEGLE v. STATE.
• Court: Alabama Court of Criminal Appeals

Page 914

286 So.2d 914

51 Ala.App. 504

Sherrel Dean SPEEGLE v. STATE.

6 Div. 505.

Court of Criminal Appeals of Alabama.

Dec. 4, 1973.

Benjamin E. Pool, Montgomery, for appellant.

William J. Baxley, Atty. Gen., and Donald G. Valeska, II, Asst. Atty. Gen., for the State.

CLARK, Supernumerary Circuit Judge.

This is an appeal from a judgment of the Circuit Court of Cullman County adjudging appellant-defendant guilty of arson in the first degree and sentencing him '. . . to life in the penitentiary of the State of Alabama as punishment . . .' The judgment was duly rendered and the sentence imposed by the court after a jury had found appellant-defendant guilty as charged in a three-count indictment, to which he had pleaded not guilty and not guilty by reason of insanity. In each of the three counts there was included an averment that the arson produced the death of J. B. Buckelew. Title 14, § 23 of the Code of Alabama provides that if arson in the first degree 'shall produce the death or maiming of any person, the punishment shall be death or imprisonment in the penitentiary for life, at the discretion of the jury.' The appeal encompasses a ruling of the trial court overruling a motion for new trial duly filed and presented by appellant-defendant.

The chief contention of appellant is that the evidence was insufficient to support a conviction and that the trial court erred in overruling the motion for a new trial, which was largely grounded on averments to the effect that the verdict was contrary to the evidence and contrary to the great weight and preponderance of the evidence.

On the night before Christmas, 1970, at approximately 10:30 P.M. the Blue and Gray Hotel in Hanceville, Alabama, was destroyed by fire. The evidence shows without dispute that J. B. Buckelew, a guest or tenant of the hotel, died as a result of smoke inhalation and carbon monoxide poisoning produced by the fire.

The evidence shows also without dispute that prior to the night of the fire appellant had been living in Birmingham, Alabama; early that night he took a bus from Birmingham to Cullman to visit his family; his mother and brother lived in Cullman; he and his wife, Evalene Speegle, had separated; they had two children; Mrs. Speegle and the two children were residing at the Blue and Gray Hotel in Hanceville.

According to the testimony of Michael Tubbs, a nephew of appellant, appellant requested Michael to drive appellant from his mother's home to a local gas station at which appellant purchased some gasoline; gasoline was placed in two plastic gallon jugs; appellant then requested Michael Tubbs to drive him to Hanceville, but Mr. Tubbs refused. Mr. Tubbs drove appellant to a store where appellant procured two brown paper bags. Then Mr. Tubbs drove appellant back to within a half block of where appellant's mother lived, where appellant parted company with Mr. Tubbs and removed from the automobile the two plastic gallon jugs containing the gasoline he purchased at the gas station.

R. L. Willoughby, Cullman police officer, testified that on the night of the fire between 8:30 and 9:30 o'clock he saw appellant get out of an automobile and walk toward his mother's house; that appellant had in his hands 'a paper sack, he had two paper sacks, or one large paper sack, it looked like two paper sacks.' On cross-examination he stated, 'I didn't know what he had in his hand. The only thing he had was a paper bag.', that it was 'brown looking, like a brown paper sack.'

Sherman Hanners, a cab driver, testified that on the night of the fire appellant called for a cab in Cullman to come take appellant on a short trip. Mr. Hanners picked appellant up at the home of appellant's mother; appellant had a brown paper bag under each arm. He had some clothes in his left hand; appellant placed one of the bags in the back seat of the automobile and the other one between his legs; they stopped at a trailer; appellant went to the trailer and returned with a bottle in his hand. The two bags had been left by him in the cab while he went to the trailer. Upon appellant's return to the cab, they proceeded to Hanceville and, at the direction of appellant, to the northwest side of the hotel, where Hanners parked the cab in the alley. Appellant told Hanners to 'wait and see if he could get a room.' Appellant got out of the cab, reached back and took the paper sack or bag that was sitting on the floorboard between his feet and went in the direction of the front of the hotel. When appellant reached the end of the steps at the front of the hotel, he turned and went up the steps and was gone approximately five minutes, and when Hanners next saw appellant, appellant was at the right front fender of the cab, at which time he did not have a paper sack in his hand; appellant was walking fast and appeared to be normal; he got back in the cab and said, 'Let's go'; Hanners then took him back to his mother's. Hanners did not smell any gas. He did not hear any noise of any kind or any unusual sound while appellant was gone from his cab at the hotel. He did not smell any smoke or hear any glass breaking. He returned appellant to his mother's at about ten or fifteen minutes until eleven o'clock. The bag that appellant took out of the car, according to Hanners, 'was full of something, it looked like it was something solid, it wasn't mashing in, it wasn't mashed in when he got out, it wasn't mashed in.' According to Hanners, he did not know what it was but it was 'something more solid than clothes.'

By the testimony of Herman Parrish, owner of the Blue and Gray Hotel, who was at the hotel at the time of the fire, it was shown that both J. B. Buckelew, the deceased, and Mrs. Speegle, appellant's wife, were tenants of the hotel; that Mrs. Speegle resided in room 201 of the hotel, which room was on the second floor of the hotel and adjacent to the top of the stairs from the first floor to the second floor. He testified that he was in the lobby when he heard 'some kind of a racket that broke upstairs'; he ran upstairs and found a 'mighty bad fire' in room 201; the door of the room was slightly ajar; the whole room was full of fire; he saw no fire anywhere else; after having run upstairs and run back downstairs he proceeded to rescue the tenants. The fire spread rapidly and the building was in flame and the walls falling within five minutes, according to Mr. Parrish. The hotel was heated by steam. There was a central unit in the basement, an automatic gas furnace that generated steam that went through pipes through radiators all over the building. Hot water for the rooms was provided by a gas heater in the basement; 'there was no fire in any of the rooms with reference to the heating.' Upon being interrogated as to whether there could have been hotplates and electric heaters in the rooms, he answered, 'I had never heard of one, I don't think so.'

Mrs. Speegle, the wife of appellant, testified that she was not at the hotel the night of the fire; all of her clothes and the clothes of her children were destroyed by the fire; the only heating device in her room was the steam radiator; she had no gas heater in her room of any kind; there was no electrical equipment in the room other than the lights. She testified that he husband had told her '. . . if I didn't come back home, I wouldn't have anything to come back to. He would burn it up, so I told him I wouldn't come back.' She and her husband had been having trouble for some time and had been separated on other occasions.

Steve Milligan, fifteen years of age the Sunday after his testimony was given, testified that he saw defendant, whom he well knew, run down stairs; about that time he heard a noise that sounded like glass being broken and a loud explosion; the noise sound like it was in Mrs. Speegle's room; he was approximately six feet from the appellant when he saw the appellant. He and his mother and three other children lived in three rooms, one of which was underneath the room rented to Mrs. Speegle. Mr. Parrish, the owner of the hotel, had left the lobby just before Steve saw Mr. Speegle. Steve's mother came out of the room after the noise and asked what had happened; he told her and they both ran to the door to see if they could see defendant.

Mrs. Edna Cook, mother of Steve Milligan, testified that she had returned to the hotel and was preparing to go to bed and to get the children to bed and that as she walked into her room a car pulled up at the side of her window and parked; she heard a noise upstairs that sounded like glass breaking and 'kind of like a boom'; she ran back out into the lobby and met Stephen and asked him what happened; she then ran out the door to the front porch of the hotel and saw a car pull out from the side of the hotel and turn north on 31 Highway.

Defendant testified at length. He denied...