State v. Anderson
| Decision Date | 07 April 1948 |
| Docket Number | No. 290.,290. |
| Citation | 47 S.E.2d 1,228 N.C. 720 |
| Parties | STATE. v. ANDERSON. |
| Court | North Carolina Supreme Court |
Appeal from Superior Court, Pitt County; H. A. Grady, Emergency Judge.
Booker T. Anderson was convicted of arson and murder in the first degree, and he appeals.
No error.
Appeal by prisoner, Booker T. Anderson, from Grady, Emergency Judge, and a jury at the August Term, 1947, of Pitt.
The August Term of the Superior Court of Pitt County opened on Monday, August 25, 1947. Honorable Henry A. Grady, an Emergency Judge, presided over the term under a commission directed to him by the Governor, reciting that it had been made to appear to the Governor that good and sufficient reasons existed why Honorable W. C. Harris, the Judge assigned thereto under Article IV, Section 11, of the State Constitution, was unable to hold the regular term of the Superior Court of Pitt County "beginning August 25th, 1947", and commissioning Judge Grady "to hold said term of said Court for the County aforesaid, beginning on Monday, the 25th day of July, 1947, and continue one week, or until the business is disposed of."
Separate counts of the indictment charged the prisoner with the commission of the following four capital felonies, namely: (1) The willful and malicious burning of the dwelling house of Willie Belle Cratch, Bobbie Eugene Cratch, and Jessie Cratch; (2) the murder of Willie Belle Cratch; (3) the murder of Bobbie Eugene Cratch; and (4) the murder of Jessie Cratch.
Upon his arraignment, the prisoner pleaded not guilty to all matters charged against him. Thereupon the judge, acting upon the joint recommendation of the solicitor and counsel for the defense, made an order in this cause in open court in the presence of the prisoner, commanding the sheriff to summon a special venire of twenty-five freeholders from the body of Pitt County to appear before the court "on Wednesday morning, August 27, 1947, at 9:30 A.M. to serve as jurors in this cause." The order was not signed by the judge, but it was reduced to writing, entered on the minutes, and issued to the sheriff by his direction. The sheriff executed the order and returned it to the clerk of the court onthe day when it was returnable, with the names of the twenty-five special veniremen summoned by him. The petit jury was chosen in part from the original panel drawn by the board of county commissioners before the term, and in part from the special venire summoned by the sheriff under the order of the judge. The prisoner did not object in any way before judgment to the validity of the order for the special venire, or to the mode in which it was summoned. The record does not indicate that the prisoner was compelled to accept any petit juror over his objection, or that the peremptory challenges allowed him by statute were exhausted when the jury was completed.
The testimony adduced by the State at the trial tended to show the circumstances hereafter set out. Willie Belle Cratch, a young widow, regularly resided in a dwelling house on Cotanche Street in Greenville with her mother, Annie Belle Spain, her six-year old son, Bobbie Eugene Cratch, and her one-year old daughter, Jessie Cratch. Shortly before eleven o'clock on the night of May 15, 1947, Willie Belle Cratch and the two children went to sleep in the same bed in their bedroom in this residence. After their retirement, Annie Belle Spain visited a neighbor about half an hour. As she was returning home, she saw the dwelling house "afire", smelled rags burning, and turned in the alarm.
After fire fighters thus called to the scene had subdued the flames, the house was entered, and it was ascertained that both of the children had been "burned very badly" and were already dead. The body of Jessie Cratch was on the bed, and that of Bobbie Eugene Cratch was on the floor beside the bed. Willie Belle Cratch lay in an unconscious state upon the floor some eight feet away. She was burned from head to feet, and died early the next morning.
The fire had been virtually confined to the bedroom occupied by the decedents. The floor of this room was "very much charred", and the door between it and the adjoining hallway was also "badly charred". Other parts of the room "were scorched by the radiation of heat." The fire had been "worse around the bed" and a nearby closet. The bed was "charred mighty bad", and one of its side rails "had been burned in two." Annie Belle Spain owned a white enameled dish pan which was habitually kept on the back porch of the dwelling. After the fire, this pan was discovered at the bed "exactly where the side rail had burned in two." The pan was "burned black inside" and "had a kerosene smell to it." The police found a glass jar containing some kerosene oil in the hallway just outside the bedroom of the decedents. This jar did not belong to any of the occupants of the house and had not been seen upon the premises before the fire.
The prisoner lived "on Douglas Avenue, about a mile from the house that was burned." Some three or four hours prior to the fire, he rode to the immediate neighborhood of the dwelling of the decedents in a taxi. At that time, he was carrying a "wrapped-up package." After the fire alarm sounded, the prisoner was observed about a half mile distant from the burning house on Cotanche Street, running towards his home on Douglas Avenue.
The prisoner had been keeping company with Willie Belle Cratch before these events, but Annie Belle Spain had objected to the association and had forbidden him to call upon her daughter. Soon after the fire, the prisoner was taken into custody as a suspect. He first denied that he had had anything to do with the burning, but he subsequently confessed that he had set the dwelling on fire with intent thereby to destroy the house. He stated, however, that he had no purpose to harm any of the decedents, and had no knowledge that any persons were inside the house when he started the fire by throwing a lighted match into a pan containing kerosene oil setting under the head of the bed. According to the State's witness, J. R. Tanner, chief of police of Greenville, the prisoner explained his motive for setting the fire as follows: "He said the reason he did it was he had a place fixed on Douglas Avenue to move Willie Belle Cratch and her children to, but that he could not make any headway because of her mother, Annie Belle Spain; * * * that he was just trying to put Willie Belle Cratch on the street so that she would have to come and live with him, and that if he could have only gotten ridof Annie Belle Spain this would not have happened."
After the prisoner had made his confession, he was escorted to the premises by the police, and there re-enacted his version of the setting of the fire.
The prisoner offered testimony at the trial tending to show that he had no connection with the burning of the house, and that he did not make any admissions or confessions to that effect.
The petit jury, however, did not accept the evidence presented in behalf of the prisoner because it returned a verdict finding the prisoner "guilty of arson and murder in the first degree." The jury made no recommendation with respect to the punishment on the conviction for arson. Sentence of death was pronounced against the prisoner, and he thereupon appealed to this Court, relying upon the exceptions hereafter considered.
Harry McMullan, Atty. Gen., and T. W. Bruton, Hughes J. Rhodes and Ralph M. Moody, Asst. Attys. Gen., for the State.
J. H. Harrell, of Greenville, for prisoner, appellant.
Subsequent to the passing of the death sentence, the prisoner challenged the validity of his trial for two reasons not theretofore advanced by him. He then asserted for the first time that the court was "illegally constituted and without authority to try and sentence him at the term beginning August 25, 1947, as the commission of the Governor commissioned Judge Henry A. Grady to hold a term of court in Pitt County beginning on Monday, the 25th day of July, 1947", and that the members of the petit jury "who were of the special venire were illegally summoned and therefore not duly constituted jurors as no order was signed and issued by the trial judge to the sheriff of Pitt County to summon the special venire."
This Court judicially knows these things: (1) That July 25, 1947, fell on Friday and not on Monday, 31 C.J.S., Evidence, § 100; (2) that no regular term of the Superior Court of Pitt County was scheduled to begin on July 25, 1947, or on any other day during such month, G.S. § 7-70; Corbin v. Berry, 83 N.C. 27, 28; 31 perior Court of Pitt County was appointed by law to being on Monday, August 25, 1947, and to continue for one week for the trial of criminal and civil c...
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