State v. Jones

• Decision Date: 30 October 1918
• Docket Number: (No. 313.)
• Citation: 97 S.E. 32
• Court: North Carolina Supreme Court
• Parties: STATE. v. JONES.

97 S.E. 32

STATE.

v.JONES.

(No. 313.)

Supreme Court of North Carolina.

Oct. 30, 1918.

Appeal from Superior Court, Durham County; Bond, Judge.

Geneva Jones was convicted as an accessory before the fact to murder, and she appeals. No error.

The defendant was convicted as an accessory before the fact to the murder of her husband, Robert Jones, by one Lonnie Council. Council had been convicted at a previous term of murder in the first degree, and was in the state's prison at Raleigh awaiting execution at the time of the trial of the defendant herein. Defendant, at the close of state's evidence, moved for judgment as of nonsuit under the statute, and, the motion being overruled, defendant excepted.

Lonnie Council testified, among other things:

"She, the defendant, spoke that day something about what I and her had been talking about and what she asked me to do. She wanted me to kill him; said he was no account to her; couldn't do any work for her. She said she didn't want him. * * * Q. Did you agree to kill him for her? A. I didn't exactly agree to do that until the night we come back from the burial, and she told me what time he would come down to this short-dog train. He was working for the railroad. She told me he would come in on the 6:20 train going towards Raleigh, east bound, where he got off, would he at the coal chute, and right there was where I would meet him, and I could do what she asked me to do."

This conversation occurred on the day before Lonnie Council killed Robert Jones at the coal chute; the killing occurring on February 8, 1918. Soon after his arrest, and while in jail, he made a similar statement to J. W. Stone and to E. G. Belvin. It appeared that the time fixed for the execution of Council in the sentence of death pronounced at the time of his trial had expired at the time of the trial of this action, and the defendant objected to his examination as a witness, because, the time for his execution having passed, he was dead in the eyes of the law, and further, if not dead, he was under sentence of death, and could not be brought to the trial to testify. Objections overruled, and the defendant excepted.

There was a verdict of guilty and a judg ment of imprisonment for life, from which defendant appealed.

R. O. Everett, of Durham, for appellant.

James S. Manning, Atty. Gen., and Frank Nash, Asst. Atty. Gen., for the State.

ALLEN, J. The statute (Rev. § 3287) defines an "accessory before the fact" as one who "shall counsel, procure, or...