State v. Horner

• Decision Date: 21 May 1958
• Docket Number: No. 579,579
• Citation: 248 N.C. 342,103 S.E.2d 694
• Parties: STATE, v. James Madison HORNER and William Gordy.
• Court: North Carolina Supreme Court

Page 694

103 S.E.2d 694

248 N.C. 342

STATE, v. James Madison HORNER and William Gordy.

No. 579

Supreme Court of North Carolina.

May 21, 1958

George B. Patton, Atty. Gen., Claude L. Love, Asst. Atty. Gen., and R. T. Sanders, Durham, Staff Atty., for State.

Nance, Barrington & Collier, Fayetteville, by Carl A. Barrington and Rudolph G. Singleton, Jr., Fayetteville, for James Madison Horner, defendant, appellant.

Seavy A. Carroll, Fayetteville, for William Gordy, defendant, appellant.

PARKER, Justice.

The State offered evidence. The defendants offered none. Each defendant assigns as error the denial by the court of his motion for judgment of nonsuit made at the close of the State's evidence.

These motions challenge the sufficiency of the State's evidence, considered in the light most favorable to the State, and giving to the State the benefit of every reasonable inference fairly to be drawn therefrom, to carry the case to the jury. State v. Kelly, 243 N.C. 177, 90 S.E.2d 241.

If there is more than a scintilla of competent evidence to support the allegations in the warrant or indictment, it is the court's duty to submit the case to the jury. State v. Kelly, supra; State v. Davenport, 227 N.C. 475, 42 S.E.2d 686.

When the State's evidence is conflicting--some tending to incriminate and some to exculpate the defendant--it is sufficient to repel a motion for judgment of nonsuit, and must be submitted to the jury. State v. Robinson, 229 N.C. 647, 50 S.E. 2d 740; State v. Edwards, 211 N.C. 555, 191 S.E. 1.

A jury is not compelled to believe the whole of a confession. The twelve are the triers of fact, and may, in their sound discretion, believe a part and reject a part. State v. Mangum, 245 N.C. 323, 96 S.E.2d 39; State v. Henderson, 180 N.C. 735, 105 S.E. 339; State v. Ellis, 97 N.C. 447, 2 S.E. 525; State v. Overton, 75 N.C. 200.

The State's evidence tends to show the following facts: Between 2:00 and 3:00 o'clock on the afternoon of Saturday, 28 September 1957, Mrs. Margaret Faircloth saw Sarah Moultrie Lindsay, a white woman, lying in a wheel rut in a little sand road some three miles west of the corporate limits of the City of Fayetteville. This road is not maintained by the State. It is a remote woods area. The weather was cold, and it was raining. Mrs. Faircloth stopped her car, got out, walked to where Sarah Moultrie Lindsay was lying in the wheel rut, and asked her who left her there. She raised her head a second or two, and asked for water. Mrs. Faircloth got in her car, drove away, and called the Sheriff's Office in Fayetteville.

About 2:55 p. m. tow Deputy Sheriffs from Fayetteville, with Mrs. Faircloth, arrived at the scene. Upon arrival they saw Sarah Moultrie Lindsay lying in a wheel rut in this little sand road. She was alive. The ground around the body was torn up with footmarks and handmarks, and on the ground were three blood spots about 10 feet apart. She had on a dark dress which was up around her waist. She was nude from her waist down. One shoe was off her foot, and about 1 1/2 to 2 feet from a blood spot. The other shoe was on her foot. A woman's purse was lying about 10 feet from her body. She shook her head, and tried to talk, but the officers could not understand her. Her entire chin was bruised black, one eye was swollen and almost closed with a little blood in its corner, her arms were bruised, and she was bloody between her legs. The officers called an ambulance, and sent her to the Cape Fear Hospital, where she died between 3:50 and 4:00 o'clock the same afternoon.

The body of Sarah Moultrie Lindsay, shortly after her death, was sent to the morgue of the North Carolina Memorial Hospital in Chapel Hill, where some 17 to 18 hours after her death Dr. William W. Forrest, held by the court to be a medical expert in the field of pathology, conducted an examination and autopsy of her body. After the clothes were removed from her body, the examination disclosed the following bruises on her body: a bruise in the front part of the scalp measuring 2 1/2 inches in greatest diameter, a bruise on the left upper eyelid measuring about an inch and extending over the nose with a hemorrhage in the white of the eye, a bruise on the lower lip, a bruise on the chin measuring 2 inches in diameter, 33 bruises on the right arm, 36 bruises on the left arm, a bruise on the left breast 6 inches in diameter, 9 small bruises on the abdomen, 23 bruises on the right leg--the largest of which was 4 inches in greatest diameter, 21 bruises on the left leg--the largest of which was 4 inches. Clotted blood was on her thighs. When the body was opened, about a quart of blood was found in the abdominal cavity that came from a tear in the liver on its bottom front surface measuring 2 inches in length and 2 inches in depth, and from a tear in the large intestine next to the liver. Dr. Forrest testified the liver is the largest organ in the body sitting in the right upper abdomen, and is normally protected by the lower ribs. This woman's liver was a little larger than usual, and it stuck down a little below the ribs. The examination disclosed she had aspirated her stomach contents into her lungs. No fractures of any bones were found. An examination of the liver microscopically showed around the edges of the laceration a considerable amount of inflammation, indicating that the laceration of the liver was several hours old from the time the laceration occurred until she died, maybe 2 or 3, or maybe 10 or 12 hours. An analysis of the body's blood for its alcoholic content showed she had enough alcohol to be intoxicated. Dr. Forrest's opinion was that the laceration of the liver and the laceration of the intestine were the real causes of Sarah Moultrie Lindsay's death, with the other factors being contributory. On cross-examination Dr. Forrest testified: 'I stated in my autopsy report that it was apparent this woman had received numerous blunt force injuries, the most serious of which was the laceration of the liver with hemorrhage into the peritoneal cavity and that the blood on the thighs and the perineum apparently came from the colon. ' He also testified on redirect examination: 'I think it would be very unlikely for a person to have her liver lacerated upon rolling off an ordinary cot or bed. I have plus that my experience of nine years in pathology; having seen many lacerations of the liver, I have never seen one result from a person falling out of bed.'

The State introduced in evidence, without any objection, a statement made by the defendant Horner on the afternoon of 1 October 1957 in the office of the Sheriff of Cumberland County in the presence of three deputy sheriffs, the substance of which follows: Shortly after dark on 27 September 1957 he was at the Crystal Drive-In on 301 South Street, Fayetteville, when a car drove up. Clyde Taylor was driving the car, and in it were the defendant Gordy and Sarah Moultrie Lindsay, who 'was over in the car on the seat or on the floor. ' Gordy told him they had a woman in the back seat of the car, he could not tell him who she was. He (Horner) went and looked at the woman, and told them they had better get her somewhere, and get her to bed. About 11:00 or 12:00 o'clock that night they carried her to his (Horner's) house, and put her to bed. Clyde Taylor went back to town. He and the defendant Gordy stayed with the woman in his apartment until 5:00 o'clock a. m. He was very high. He and Gordy were in a double bed in his apartment, and the woman was in a cot in his apartment. At 5:00 o'clock a. m. on 28 September 1957 they carried the woman to the home of Eunice Hall. Other evidence in the record shows that the home of Eunice Hall is about a mile, or a little less, from the place in the road where Mrs. Faircloth and the two deputy sheriffs saw Sarah Moultrie Lindsay lying between 2:00 and 3:00 o'clock that afternoon. All three went in the Hall home. He identified himself to Eunice Hall, who was cooking breakfast. Gordy and the woman took some drinks of whiskey out of a bottle they had left, and he took one drink. While the Hall woman was still cooking, the woman went over, laid down on a cot, and soon rolled off the cot onto the floor. She moaned and groaned. He then noticed she had on no breeches, and that she had started bleeding, blood trickling down her legs. He and Eunice cleaned her up, and placed her on the cot. He and Gordy took her out of the house, placed her in the car and carried her down 'the side road where she was later found. ' When they got there, 'they started to put her out of the car * * *, she started raising cain and said he couldn't leave her. ' He gave her a shove, ran and got in his car, and they drove off. It was 8:15 to 8:30 in the morning. He and Gordy went to the White House on Robeson Street, where they got beer. They stayed there some 30 or 40 minutes, and went back to the home of Eunice Hall.

The defendant Horner had a 1951 Plymouth automobile. On the Monday following the date of the death of Sarah Moultrie Lindsay, Deputy Sheriff Baxley examined this car. It had a new seat cover on the front seat. Next day, Tuesday, Baxley went to where Horner worked, and told him they wanted to talk with him at the office. Horner got in his car, and as they drove in the driveway at the court-house, Baxley said: 'I imagine you know why we picked you up? ' Horner replied, 'Yes, I have been expecting it; I saw you out at the car yesterday. ' Horner said he had the seat cover changed Saturday. The Lindsay woman died that Saturday. In the Sheriff's office Baxley told Horner that they knew he and Gordy had been with Sarah Moultrie Lindsay on Friday night and Saturday morning, the date of her death. Horner replied: 'Yes, told me that he and his brother Billy Horner, a Taylor boy and Billy Gordy carried her to his house about 11:00 o'clock, put her to bed there; that they all came back to town, other than Taylor. They messed around the drive-in a...