State v. Greer

• Decision Date: 20 December 1940
• Docket Number: 724.
• Citation: 12 S.E.2d 238,218 N.C. 660
• Parties: STATE v. GREER.
• Court: North Carolina Supreme Court

12 S.E.2d 238

218 N.C. 660

STATE v. GREER.

No. 724.

Supreme Court of North Carolina

December 20, 1940

Victoria Greet was tried under the following indictment: "The Jurors for the State Upon Their Oath Present, That Victoria Greer in Forsyth County, on the 11th day of May, 1940, wound one John Greer with a deadly weapon, to-wit, a certain pistol; and with the intent to feloniously kill, and did inflict serious bodily injury to the great damage of the said John Greer contrary to the statute in such cases made and provided, and against the peace and dignity of the State."

John Greer, husband of the defendant, testified that he went to his stepbrother's house to pay his wife $4.50 alimony due that month under Judge Lipfert's order, as the result of an indictment for nonsupport prosecuted against him by his wife. His wife, he testified, did not have a receipt, and left the house. He gave the money to his stepbrother's wife. He returned that night and got the receipt from her and met his wife as he went out, and she asked to speak to him. They sat on the "settee" and she said "John, I am in love with you. Come on back and live with me." He declined, and she told him if he did not "You ain't going to be so hot." When asked what she meant, she said, "If you don't come back you'll find out."

Afterward according to his testimony, he went out, and was in his brother's car. She followed him to the car and repeated her request for him to come back. "There were five or six people in my brother's car when I got in it. They were: Stacy McLaurin, Nancy McLaurin, and a girl named Jessie who was Nancy's sister, Eloise Bohannon, and Paul Anderson. I went back to my brother's house and parked the car. My brother's house is about seven blocks from where my brother-in-law lives, and is on Cherry Street. I went in the house and told my sister-in-law how my wife threatened me. She says, 'There is nothing to that, just old love.' I thought nothing about it and sat there and talked a while. I went back out to the car. The people were still sitting in the car, never did get out. I was not drinking, and I never drank a drop of whiskey in my life. I sat in the car under the steering wheel for about five minutes and my wife walked up. This was about seven blocks from where I left her. She asked could she speak to me and I said she could. I got out and we stood back of the car. I put my foot up on the bumper. She says, 'John, aren't you going home with me?' I says, 'No, I told you I wasn't.' She says, 'John, I feel sorry for you.' I didn't know what she meant. She kept saying, 'I feel sorry for you.' She would never say what she was going to do. I turned and went on and sat back in the car. She walked around beside the car, between the car and the house, and she pulled out a pistol, She says, 'All you damned negroes get out of that car.' Everybody jumped out of the car and ran. I sat there in the car. She had the gun on me, and there was nothing for me to do. I got out on the opposite side of the car in the street. The car was between me and her. She had the gun dead on me. She says, 'Come out from behind the car or I will shoot through the car.' I circled behind the car. My brother at that time walked out of the door and called me. She looked at him and says, 'Bus Greer, you ain't got nothing to do with this.' She throwed the gun up and says, 'I am desperately in love with this man.' She kept chasing me around the car until I got tired of running around the car. She told me to come on out. I came on out from behind the car with my hands up. As I did, she had got the pistol leveled right dead in the middle of my stomach. She says, 'Get up the street in front of me.' I had my hands up and I walked up the street in front of her. She had the gun close to me in my back. The pistol was not touching me but it was real close. I walked up the street scared to look back. I was looking for her to shoot me any minute. I walked just about fifty feet between Seventeenth Street and the intersection, and she shot me. I had on these same pants. When she shot, I run. She snapped the gun at my back three times I know of. I don't know how many more. The gun didn't go off no more. She struck out behind me and run me around down Seventeenth, around Twentieth and on back into Cherry again--ran me about two blocks. When I got up on Cherry Street, I don't know which way she went."

Further testimony of this witness was as to the nature of the wound and statement of his difficulty in living with her.

The witness was corroborated in the main aspects of his testimony as to the shooting by Eloise Bohannon and John Pardue, and J. R. Bowles, of the detective division of the Police Department, stated that he saw no marks on defendant that night at Police Headquarters; that she had told him that John grabbed her arm and that the gun went off accidentally.

Victoria Greer, the defendant, testified as follows: "I am the wife of John Greer, the prosecuting witness. I recall the afternoon before the shooting occurred that night. My husband and I had been over to Squire Adams' office that day. It was after two o'clock that we left there. After I had been home for an hour or more, my husband came to my home. He stopped at the house and came in and told me to write him a receipt. As I went to get the receipt in the bottom of the vanity drawer, this man strikes me across the head and knocks me to the floor and began beating me and kicking me and said 'I asked you to take the non-support down and you didn't do it and I am not going to pay it. And if I do pay it, you are not going to reap the benefit of it because you will have to pay it out for doctor's bills.' He severely beat me there and forced me to drink something --I don't know what it was--and then told me if I would have him up what he would do to me and he left the house without even paying it. I did not go to a doctor just then. I did go to Dr. Jordan and he examined me. I went there several times, and also went to the hospital. After my husband whipped me that afternoon in my house, I next saw him that night. I don't know what time it was, but they say it was around ten o'clock. I went down to Mrs. Brockman's and was there talking to her and I went next door to see her aunty. When I came back to my home, John Greer was in the house standing in the front room near the center of the floor in the dark and as soon as I walked in the house, he began to argue with me about having him up, said I had taken out a warrant for him. I told him I hadn't taken out a warrant for him. He says, 'Oh, yes, you have.' I says, 'What's the matter with you today? You beat me up, it looks like you ought to be satisfied.' I sat down on the davenport and tried to explain to him. He had his hand in his left pocket. I asked him what he was doing with his hand in his pocket. Just as I said that, he jerked his hand out of his pocket with a short pistol in it. I knocked it out of his hands and run with it. I started down the steps and told him I was going to report the gun to Police Headquarters. He says, 'You are not; that is not my gun, it belongs to a girl.' As I run up the street, he passed me about middle ways of the block. I don't know which way he went. I tried to make it to my mother's house. This car drove up almost at Seventeenth and Cherry and someone says, 'There she is now'. As I walked about two or three steps, he parked the car and jumped out. He started arguing with me, swearing at me and telling me to give him the gun. I told him I wasn't going to give him the gun and was going to report the gun. He made advances toward me. By me being scared, and beat up, and excited, I put the gun up to protect myself just as he made a lunge toward me. When I threw the pistol up, he wheeled and that is when I squeezed the lemon squeezer and it pierced him in the side. I don't know what size pistol it was, but it was very short. I had it in my left hand and had a small pocketbook in my right hand. After this pistol exploded, I had two gashes cut on this left hand, and powder on the inside, kind of a scorched place on the inside of my left hand. I bled. I had my hat and some of the blood is still on the hat. When the gun went off, it frightened me so bad I dropped the gun and run. I went down Seventeenth Street until I got to a little bridge, went across the bridge and came back to Cherry. I went down Cherry to the Old Town Road, across it, down to Thirteenth Street, crossed the Boulevard and went up Abattoir Street and into Trade Street. The police did not have to catch me; I gave up and told them what happened as best I could. Later on I was released on bond. I had never shot a pistol before and had never seen that pistol before that night. I don't know what became of the pistol. I dropped it there in the street and...