State v. Barrett, 36-69
| Decision Date | 02 June 1970 |
| Docket Number | No. 36-69,36-69 |
| Court | Vermont Supreme Court |
| Parties | STATE of Vermont v. Charles R. BARRETT, |
James M. Jeffords, Atty. Gen., and William T. Keefe, Asst. Atty. Gen., for the State.
Peter Forbes Langrock, Middlebury, and George T. Costes, St. Albans, for respondent.
Before HOLDEN, C. J. and SHANGRAW, BARNEY, SMITH and KEYSER, JJ.
The respondent was charged with first degree murder and found guilty of the jury. His appeal raises a number of questions, from an issue relating to the impanelling of the jury, through motions for a change of venue and for a directed verdict, to objections to the charge and to the form of the verdict. Some of these issues were also raised below in connection with motions for a new trial and for judgment notwithstanding the verdict. In this Court he seeks to have a judgment of not guilty entered with respect to the crimes of murder in the first degree and murder in the second degree, with a remand for a new trial on the remaining homicidal charges.
The victim was a Clifton B. Combs, a person the respondent did not know particularly well. The two came together on a Friday night while both were apparently making the rounds of St. Albans restaurants and bars. Both had been drinking and both may have been involved in altercations with others earlier in the evening, before they met. They were seen together, apparently on friendly terms, a short distance from the alley where the killing occurred. The only available evidence as to what happened comes from a statement given by the respondent. It sets out the tragedy as resulting from a drunken assault on him by the deceased with a knife. The investigation disclosed that the wallet and watch of Combs were taken and later destroyed by the respondent. The autopsy revealed some fifty wounds in the deceased, including sixteen knife wounds in the chest. The weapon was the knife belonging to Combs.
The trial court refused to grant the motion for a change of venue. It made findings, the import of which were that, although the affair was both notorious and brutal, the reporting of the event, extensive as it was, was not inflamnatory or denunciatory. Reliance was placed on the competency of counsel to discover prejudice in prospective jurors and prevent their sitting.
It is most proper that the trial court, being on the scene, be the tribunal whose judgment and evaluation of the situation is given great weight. Its appraisal of the community temper, as affected by the passage of time from episode to trial, and the nature and measure of the public outcry as it affects the prospects for a fair trial, will, necessarily, have high acceptance here. State v. Truman, 124 Vt. 285, 289, 204 A.2d 93.
It is well to note, however, that both the respondent and the state have an interest in insuring a fair trial. The right to petition is given to both of them by 13 V.S.A. § 4631. In these days of easy travel and communication, the advantages of avoiding any claim of a biased jury may for outweigh any immediate practical advantage of keeping the trial within the aroused county or district. The denial of such a motion usually insures that the issue must be relitigated in post-conviction proceedings at least. Nevertheless, particularly in view of the disposition of this appeal, we are not persuaded to find error in the ruling already made on the question of a venue change.
Sixteen stab wounds in the chest do not necessarily suggest self-defense. An evaluation of the evidence from the viewpoint of a trier of fact might well be persuasive that the defense was not proved. But the deadly instrument did belong to the deceased, not the respondent. The statement of the respondent, in evidence, did claim that the altercation was instigated by the deceased, and was converted to the bloody affair it became, by the ignition of the respondent's violent anger at the aggression by the deceased. The respondent requested that self-defense be charged, and objected to the court's failure to make any reference to the defense, either in bar of the charge or in mitigation of its degree. As the language of Wilbur v. Prior, 67 Vt. 508, 514, 32 A. 474, indicates, we are not called...
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