State v. Corn

• Decision Date: 28 July 1949
• Docket Number: 16240.
• Citation: 54 S.E.2d 559,215 S.C. 166
• Parties: STATE v. CORN.
• Court: South Carolina Supreme Court

54 S.E.2d 559

215 S.C. 166

STATE v. CORN.

No. 16240.

Supreme Court of South Carolina

July 28, 1949

R. B. Hildebrand, York, W. C. McDow, Billy D Hayes, Rock Hill, for appellant.

W. G. Finley, Solicitor, York, W. B. Wilson, Rock Hill, Childes & Childes, Lincolnton, N. C., for respondent.

BAKER, Chief Justice.

At the Decembers, 1948, term of the Court of General Sessions for York County, the appellant was tried and convicted of, on June 5, 1948, murdering by shooting his employer, George C. Beam, Jr. Following his conviction without recommendation to mercy, and the refusal of a motion for a new trial, appellant was sentenced by the trial Judge to death by electrocution.

The appeal raises the issues that the trial Judge erred, (1) in refusing the motion of the appellant for a directing verdict of not guilty, (2) in failing to exclude hearsay evidence to which timely objection was made (3) in making a remark with reference to the testimony of a witness, the effect of which was to over-emphasize the credibility of such witness, (4) in refusing a new trial because of the Solicitor in his closing argument, having read to the jury a statement or excerpt from the testimony which he attributed to the appellant, but in fact was from the testimony of another witness, (5) in refusing a new trial because of a misstatement of the testimony by one of the counsel associated with the Solicitor in his argument to the jury, (6) in speeding up the trial by lengthening the regular hours for the holding of the court, and by having night sessions in addition, only while the appellant was presenting his defense, (7) in refusing a new trial based upon the ground that the Solicitor in his closing argument to the jury read from written statements alleged to have been made by the appellant to officers, when such statements had not been offered in evidence, (8) in refusing a new trial on the ground that counsel for the defense were required to exchange seats with counsel for the State, thereby placing counsel for the State (and the relatives of the deceased who were unnecessarily seated around the table) in close proximity to the jury, (9) in refusing a new trial based on the ground that it was error to allow the Solicitor to elicit from the appellant while he was testifying the fact of his previous convictions by court martial of crimes, and allowing the Solicitor to go into detail as to the sentences imposed, and (10) in failing to charge the jury on the law of alibi. We will discuss these issues in the order above outlined.

The evidence tending to prove the guilt of the appellant is wholly circumstantial. The rule of law applicable to circumstantial evidence is well established in this State by the following cases: State v. Kimbrell, 191 S.C 238, 4 S.E.2d 121; State v. Dornberg, 192 S.C. 513, 7 S.E.2d 467; State v. Edwards, 194 S.C. 410, 10 S.E.2d 587; State v. Powell, 202 S.C. 432, 25 S.E.2d 479; State v. Takis, 204 S.C. 140, 28 S.E.2d 679; State v. Hurt et al., 212 S.C. 461, 48 S.E.2d 313; State v. Manis, 214 S.C. 99, 51 S.E.2d 370. It is not necessary to again set forth this rule of the applicable law, although we adhere to it.

All of the testimony indicates that on or about June 5, 1948, George C. Beam, Jr., was shot and killed in the warehouse portion of his place of business, conducted in the name of Carolina Oil Company, on Fairfield Avenue in the City of Rock Hill, and that at some time thereafter his body was placed in a wooden crate or box, weighted down, and hauled from the warehouse and dumped in the waters of Crowder's Creek, where it was found floating approximately seven days from the time he was last seen alive in Rock Hill.

The testimony in this case is voluminous, and unnecessarily so, even if practically the same questions (which required answers) had not been asked several times. In addition, matters were gone into in the minutest detail which could at most have created mere suspicion of the guilt of the appellant, which suspicion fades entirely when the record is considered as a whole.

In view of the fact that there must be a new trial of this case, we think it best that we refrain from discussing or even mentioning the circumstances which justified the trial Judge in submitting the issue of the appellant's guilt to the jury. Suffice it to say that we have studied the record, and that in our opinion there was no error in his so doing. We have reached this conclusion after carefully reviewing the testimony.

When the State's witness, F. W. Wolfe, was on the witness stand, he testified that while he and other officers were inside the warehouse where Beam had been killed by being shot with a high powered pistol or a rifle, they fired several shots from a .38 special revolver at different paces, the bullets passing through the north end of the warehouse. This witness was then permitted to testify, over the strenuous objection of counsel for the appellant, that following the firing of these shots, he could find no one in the neighborhood who had heard any shots. Seven pages of the record are consumed with the objections, discussions of counsel and of the trial Judge (all in the presence of the jury), in reference to the admissibility thereof and was tantamount to permitting the witness to testify that the people residing and working in the neighborhood had told him they did not hear the...