State v. Alverson

• Decision Date: 05 July 1922
• Docket Number: 10912.
• Citation: 113 S.E. 120,120 S.C. 273
• Parties: STATE v. ALVERSON.
• Court: South Carolina Supreme Court

113 S.E. 120

120 S.C. 273

STATE v. ALVERSON.

No. 10912.

Supreme Court of South Carolina

July 5, 1922

Appeal from General Sessions Circuit Court of Spartanburg County; H F. Rice, Judge.

T. B Alverson was convicted of murder, and he appeals. Affirmed.

A. E Hill, of Spartanburg, and Bonham & Price, of Greenville, for appellant.

I. C Blackwood, Sol., and Nicholls & Wyche, all of Spartanburg, for the State.

MARION J.

The appellant was tried for the murder of Irby Knighton at the January, 1922, term of court for Spartanburg county, Judge H. F. Rice, presiding, and was found guilty of murder, with recommendation to the mercy of the court.

Upon the call of the case for trial, the defendant's counsel moved for a continuance upon the ground that the presiding judge's charge to the grand jury of the county, delivered immediately before the call of the case in the presence of the petit jurors in attendance, was of such nature and tenor as to prejudice the rights of the defendant. The motion was refused. After the jury had rendered a verdict, and before the appellant was sentenced, the trial judge refused a motion for a new trial, made upon the grounds that the court had erred in forcing the appellant to trial over the objections of counsel, and that there was no evidence of malice, and therefore no foundation for the verdict of murder. The appeal raises the two questions of whether the circuit judge committed error of law (1) in refusing the motion for continuance and (2) in not granting a new trial on the ground that there was no evidence to sustain the verdict of murder.

As to the first proposition, that the trial judge should have granted the motion for a continuance on the ground that the charge to the grand jury had improperly prejudiced the defendant's case, we think the question raised is conclusively settled against appellant's contention by the decisions of this court in State v. Glenn, 88 S.C. 162, 70 S.E. 453, and in State v. Moody, 94 S.C. 26, 77 S.E. 713. Such references to the judge's charge as appear in the record would indicate that it was entirely along the conventional line of directing the grand jury's attention to their duties and responsibilities as conservators of law and order. Some special attention seems to have been devoted to violation of the liquor law as a breeding source of crimes of violence. There is no suggestion however, that the charge was in itself improper, or that it in anywise transcended the proprieties of the occasion. Defendant's counsel themselves characterized it as a "masterful charge." In the case of State v. Glenn, supra, the circuit judge declined to charge defendant's request to the effect that the court's prior charge to the grand jury had nothing to do with the case on trial, and was not to influence the petit...