State v. Lee
| Decision Date | 13 February 1911 |
| Docket Number | 18,339 |
| Citation | 127 La. 1077,54 So. 356 |
| Court | Louisiana Supreme Court |
| Parties | STATE v. LEE |
Appeal from Fourteenth Judicial District Court, Parish of Avoyelles G. H. Couvillon, Judge.
Mack Lee was convicted of murder, and he appeals. Judgment set aside, and case remanded for further trial.
J. C Cappel, for appellant.
Walter Guion, Atty. Gen., S. Allen Bordelon, Dist. Atty., and R. G Pleasant, Asst. Atty. Gen., for the State.
The accused was convicted of murder and sentenced to be hanged, and has appealed.
On December 1, 1901, one James Williams, a white man, was murdered by a negro named Mack Lee, in the parish of Avoyelles. Mack Lee escaped, leaving, as we understand, his wife behind him; and was no further heard from. In April, 1910, a negro by the name of Guy Fenner was arrested in San Antonio, Tex., for crime. It was thought he was Mack Lee. Accordingly, he was brought to Avoyelles to be tried for the crime of 1901. On the way, when the train stopped at Opelousas, some persons came on board, and one of them said he identified him as Mack Lee. At Whiteville, ten miles before reaching Eola, a Mr. O'Quinn, came on board and again identified him, and told him he ought to be hanged. The prisoner was manacled and fettered; and all this put him in great fear. The sheriff, who had him in charge, told O'Quinn not to scare the man any more than he was already. At Eola, some 30 miles from Marksville, the parish seat, they left the train and took a carriage, the sheriff and a deputy sheriff being in the carriage with the prisoner. The sheriff and the deputy plied him with questions. The deputy frankly admits that "my object was to have him tell it to me or tangle himself up to find out whether or not he was the one." The sheriff "asked him how he could account for those who identified him; and I told him, 'Guy, there is no one that knows better than you if you are the right man or not,' and I said, 'If I was in your place and was the right man, I would try and effect a compromise.'" The prisoner maintained that he was not Mack Lee, but Guy Fenner. After he had been in jail seven days he made a confession to one of the deputy sheriffs, in the presence of the deputy who had plied him with questions in the carriage to try and have him "tangle himself up." The deputy to whom he confessed asked him why he had concluded to confess to him when he had refused to confess to the sheriff; and he answered, "I am a good judge of human nature, and I know you are a good man." The sheriff and the deputies testified that they had made no threats and no promises, and had offered no hopes or inducements to the prisoner, and that the confession was entirely free and voluntary. We do not think it was. Even if the man had known himself not to be Mack Lee, he would have had good reason to be fearful. He was in the grip of the law; among strangers; manacled and fettered; men were coming to him and saying they identified him as the murderer, and that he ought to be hanged. The advice of the sheriff, under these circumstances, that it would be better for him to compromise, or, in other words, to confess ("to compromise" could not, under the circumstances, mean anything else than to confess, since a confession was all the man had to offer to the state by way of compromise) must have sunk deep into his mind; and it may not be surprising that after ruminating over it for a week in jail he should have concluded to accept and act upon it; and that for doing so should have chosen from among the persons around him that one in whose face he thought he had observed an absence of harshness.
In State v. Alphonse, 34 La.Ann. 9-19, this court said:
"The prisoner might...
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