State v. Beale

• Decision Date: 29 November 1927
• Citation: 141 S.E. 401
• Parties: STATE. v. BEALE.
• Court: West Virginia Supreme Court

141 S.E. 401

STATE.
v.
BEALE.

Supreme Court of Appeals of West Virginia.

Nov. 29, 1927.

For majority opinion, see 141 S. E. 7.

LIVELY, J. (dissenting). I regret that I cannot concur with the majority in the foregoing opinion. This is my third dissent in seven years' service on the bench. As I grow older and note the fallibility of my own judgment and conclusions, I give more consideration and weight to the judgment of others, and therefore have not been quick to dissent (a regrettable tendency in many judges) from the conclusions of others more capable; but the grave results here involved impel me to clear my conscience of this man's blood.

I hold that a change of venue should have been awarded. The crime, if one was committed, occurred May 9, 1926. The trial was

[141 S.E. 402]

had at the following July term, and sentence pronounced July 28, 1926. The newspapers were full of the sordid affair. The people were righteously indignant. Many arrests were made. The sheriff's force, aided by state police, were active in trying to discover the supposed perpetrator to such an extent that injunctive power of a court of chancery was successfully invoked to prevent them from continuing "third degree" methods to extract confession or damaging evidence from Layne, at whose home the debauchery occurred. The people of the city of Williamson, which contains one-third of the entire population of the county, as well as those outside, knew these facts from the public press, and the matter was a general conversation and comment.

A. R. Stepp, 44 years old, chief of police of the city, and who was born, reared, and always lived in the county, and who did not know defendant, and had no interest in the case, swears that he is thrown in daily contact with the people of the city and a majority of those in the county, and that he had heard the case discussed by them; that the reports were that Layne and Beale had raped, murdered, and thrown into the river Rissie Perdue; and that from expressions made by the people in relation thereto he swears that he is of the opinion that Beale cannot get a fair trial in the county. The point is made in the opinion that the expressions he had heard were not set out in the affidavit. It is true that he does not say that the expressions were that "they should be hanged, or lynched, " or anything of like character, but the fact remains that the talk impelled him to state on oath that defendant could not get a fair trial. The petition for change of venue...