State v. Brown

• Decision Date: 14 April 1948
• Docket Number: 16067.
• Citation: 47 S.E.2d 521,212 S.C. 237
• Parties: STATE v. BROWN.
• Court: South Carolina Supreme Court

47 S.E.2d 521

212 S.C. 237

STATE v. BROWN.

No. 16067.

Supreme Court of South Carolina

April 14, 1948

Murchison & West, of Camden, and Allen M. Sapp of Columbia, for appellant.

T. P. Taylor, Sol., of Columbia, for respondent.

OXNER Judge.

Appellant John Brown, was jointly indicted with Russell Brown, Isaac Hill and R. B. Bennett, for the murder of Edward Speights. The last three named defendants were also charged with being accessories before and after the fact. The case was tried at the February, 1947, term of the Court of General Sessions of Kershaw County. At the conclusion of the State's testimony, the trial judge granted a motion for a directed verdict as to Russell Brown, Isaac Hill and R. B. Bennett. He refused a similar motion in behalf of appellant who was found guilty of manslaughter and sentenced to imprisonment for a term of twelve years.

The State relied almost entirely on alleged confessions by the defendants to sustain the charge in the indictment. The trial Judge held, and it is conceded, that the evidence apart from the alleged confessions of appellant was insufficient to warrant his conviction. The questions to be determined on this appeal are stated in appellant's brief as follows:

'I. Did the admission in evidence of certain statements purporting to be confessions of appellant's co-defendants constitute error?

'II. Did the evidence show as a matter of law that the purported confession of the appellant was involuntary, therefore inadmissible?

'III. Did the treatment accorded appellant amount to such a denial of due process of law as to render his purported confession inadmissible?'

Appellant and Russell Brown are brothers. The deceased Edward Speights was a brother of appellant's wife. Shortly after midnight on Sunday, August 25, 1946, a passing motorist observed a man lying on U. S. Highway No. 1 about three miles north of Blaney. A highway patrolman was notified and, along with the coroner of Kershaw County, immediately commenced an investigation. Between 1:30 and 2:00 a. m. they found Edward Speights lying across the pavement on the right side of the road in traveling toward Camden with his head near the center of the highway. There was a small amount of blood on the pavement near a cut on one of his hands. The highway patrolman and coroner took him to the hospital at Camden and immediately returned to the scene for the purpose of continuing the investigation. All of the defendants, as well as Speights and his parents, lived in this vicinity. A number of Negroes, including several of the defendants, were interrogated. They found appellant at a nearby tobacco barn about 3:00 a. m. where he and some other Negroes were curing tobacco. It developed during this investigation that Speights had been driving appellant's car during the previous afternoon and the early part of that night. The car was found that morning lying in a ditch along the highway at Blaney. The officers became suspicious of Russell Brown and Isaac Hill and some time that Sunday afternoon placed them in the county jail at Camden where they were held for investigation. These defendants, as well as all the other Negroes interviewed, denied any knolwedge of the occurrence.

Speights never regained consciousness after being carried to the hospital. He died on the morning of August 27, 1946, or a little more than 48 hours after he was found on the highway. The physician who performed the autopsy testified that the only external evidence of injury which he found was an incised wound about a half-inch long on the thumb of the left hand, a small cut on the third finger of the right hand and a bruised area about half an inch in diameter beneath the right eye, all of which were of a superficial nature. The autopsy, however, revealed a bruised place inside of the scalp. This physician was of the opinion that Speights died from the result of a blow on the head by some blunt instrument and that the injury which caused his death could not have resulted from an automobile striking him or from an automobile accident.

Appellant was arrested without a warrant around noon on Spetember 10, 1946, and carried by the officers to Columbia where he was turned over to the police authorities and placed in the city jail. These officers testified that the county jail at Camden was so constructed that if appellant had been placed there, any interrogation of him could have been easily overheard by Isaac Hill and Russell Brown, and that it was necessary to detain appellant at a place where he could be examined without the knowledge of the two defendants mentioned. According to the State's evidence, appellant remained in the jail at Columbia without being interrogated until about 10 o'clock the next morning, at which time Deputy Sheriff McLeod and another deputy sheriff of Kershaw County, who had driven over from Camden, proceeded to question appellant in one of the offices at police headquarters. The Chief of Detectives and two city detectives were also present. These officers testified that after Deputy Sheriff McLeod had talked to appellant for about twenty or thirty minutes, he stated that his conscience had been hurting him during the night and he wanted to tell the truth; that he thereupon made a free and voluntary confession and after doing so, was taken into another office where a clerk was called to take down the statement; that appellant's statement was then reduced to writing, read over to him, and he signed same before a notary public. Omitting formal parts, this statement is as follows:

'On Saturday night, I think about three weeks ago, August 24, 1946, I left my house and went down the road looking for Edward Speights, my brother-in-law. I was looking for my car too. I met Edward about 200 yards down the highway, and I asked him why he took my car and where it was. We started fussing and he jumped on me, and I hit him across the head with a stick. He fell to the ground and lay there. Russell Brown and Isaac (Hill) walked up and helped me put him in the highway. I was scared and I left him there, and went back to the tobacco barn where the police found me.'

After this statement was signed, the Kershaw County officers carried appellant to Camden where he was placed in the jail in which Russell Brown and Isaac Hill were detained. The defendant Bennett was arrested that night and also placed in the same jail.

About 9 or 10 o'clock p. m., two deputy sheriffs, one of whom was present that morning when the confession was made in Columbia, and a rural policeman interviewed appellant. This rural policeman, who was with the officers when appellant was arrested on the previous day, testified that he asked appellant that night why he didn't tell him on the trip to Columbia that he had struck the deceased, to which appellant replied: 'I wanted to think further about it.' One of these deputy sheriffs testified that he asked appellant at this time whether he had told the truth in Columbia and appellant answered: 'No I didn't, not altogether. I didn't hit him with a stick. I hit him with a piece of iron.' According to the testimony of these officers, they asked him what he did with the iron and he said that it was at his house where it was used to prop up a window; that at their request, appellant then freely went along with them to the house where about midnight they took possession of the piece of iron which the State claims was used in inflicting the fatal blow; and that as they held it before a light, he said: 'There is nothing on it; I washed it off when I got home that night.'

The next morning four or five of the officers visited the jail and interrogated all of the defendants together. A stenographer from the County Treasurer's office was also present to take down any statement made. (It appears to be conceded that Russell Brown, Hill and Bennett continued to deny any knowledge of the crime until after appellant was brought back to the Camden jail). According to the testimony of these officers, all of the defendants that morning gave statements substantially in accord with the confession made by appellant in Columbia except that several of them thought appellant hit Speights with an iron instead of a stick, as stated in the confession in Columbia, and said that appellant struck Speights four or five times. Bennett further stated during this interrogation that he went by the tobacco barn on the night of the alleged crime and jokingly said to appellant that 'Edward Speights had wrecked his automobile.' According to the State's evidence, Russell Brown and Hill admitted in their statements that after Speights had fallen on the pavement, they assisted appellant in placing his body across the road so that it would appear 'that an automobile had come by and run over it and make it appear that he got hurt by the automobile.' The officers said that as each defendant concluded his statement, no comment was made by the other defendants. All of these statements were taken down by the stenographer but before they could be transcribed, a lawyer was permitted to visit the defendants at the jail and when the statements were carried to the defendants later during the day, they refused to sign them.

Appellant denied that he committed the offense charged or that he had any connection with it and offered evidence in support of an alibi to the effect that on the Saturday night in question he remained almost continuously at the tobacco barn helping his father-in-law cure tobacco. He contended that he signed the statement in Columbia through fear and intimidation. He testified that he was kept in the Columbia jail two nights; that twice each night he was carried by the Columbia police to the office where he was cursed, beaten with clubs and blackjacks, kicked and...