State v. Alston
| Decision Date | 28 February 1886 |
| Citation | 94 N.C. 930 |
| Court | North Carolina Supreme Court |
| Parties | STATE v. FRED. ALSTON. |
OPINION TEXT STARTS HERE
INDICTMENT, tried before Phillips, Judge, and a jury, at Fall Term, 1885, of Halifax Superior Court.
The defendant was indicted for burning a tobacco barn, the property of one T. R. Bowers, in September, 1885. There was a verdict of guilty, and judgment thereon, from which the defendant appealed.
Attorney General, for the State .
No counsel for the defendant.
The statement of the case, in disregard of the repeated suggestions of this Court, that only such parts of the evidence should be set forth as will enable this Court to pass upon the rulings to which exception is taken below, contains a mass of superfluous and trival facts, which should have been omitted, as not pertinent to the exceptions taken. Strickland v. Draughan, 88 N. C., 315; Crawford v. Orr, 84 N. C., 246.
But while the material facts disclosed by the evidence, raised, to say the least, a very strong suspicion that the defendant was guilty of the crime with which he was charged, we are of the opinion that there was such error in the admission of evidence, as entitles the defendant to a new trial.
The facts necessary to our decision, under the view of the case we have taken, are, that the barn of T. R. Bowers, was burned, about twilight on the ...... of September, 1885. He had two barns, one old, the other new. The old barn was burned, and they stood about fifty yards apart. The old barn contained the tobacco of the prosecutor Bowers, and the other that of one Windsor, who was the father-in-law of the defendant. Some eight or ten minutes before the discovery of the fire, the defendant, with Bowers, Lee and Kemp Alston, was at the stables, about seventy yards distant from the old barn, where the defendant was feeding the steers. They left him there, and about the time they reached the dwelling, some hundred yards from the stables, the fire was seen to blaze up in the barn. About this time, some one, about the size of the defendant, was seen going from the burning barn to the new barn, and as the neighbors were hastening to the fire, Georgiana Alston, a witness for the State, saw the defendant standing by the new barn. He said, --he told her this three times.
In the course of the trial, the witness Bowers was recalled by the State, and the Solicitor asked him this question: “Did you ever have a tobacco barn burned before, and what time was it burned.” The State offered this evidence, to show the animus of the defendant, and to show whose tobacco was in the barn that was burned the year before, the witness, Georgiana, having stated that the defendant said, “last year it was Windsor's, this year...
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