State v. Lyon
| Decision Date | 30 June 1879 |
| Citation | 81 N.C. 600,31 Am.Rep. 518 |
| Court | North Carolina Supreme Court |
| Parties | STATE v. REBECCA LYON. |
PETITION for a Certiorari filed by the prisoner and granted at June Term, 1879, of THE SUPREME COURT.
The facts upon which the motion for the discharge of prisoner is based are sufficiently stated by THE CHIEF JUSTICE in delivering the opinion of this court.
Attorney General, for the State .
Messrs. Thos. Ruffin and J. W. Graham, for prisoner .
The prisoner Rebecca Ann Lyon was examined in the summer of 1877 as a witness upon an inquisition of the coroner's jury into the causes of the death of Nannie Blackwell, and on behalf of the state, before two successive grand juries in Orange superior court, on bills of indictment charging Robert Boswell with the murder of the deceased, and again upon his trial at fall term, 1878, before the petty jury by whose verdict he was convicted. At the same term the prisoner herself was indicted for the same crime, as an accomplice, mainly upon the testimony of Robert Boswell, and at spring term, 1879, another bill was found against the prisoner in which she is charged with the murder of one Ned Lyon. The record does not show, nor is it suggested that the testimony was obtained upon any assurances of leniency or favor to be extended to the prisoner or that it was not voluntarily given in. After the verdict was rendered against Boswell, the solicitor proposed to put the prisoner on trial for complicity in the same crime, which her counsel resisted, insisting that by reason of her having been used as a witness on these several occasions, and the materiality of her testimony, she was equitably entitled to be discharged from this prosecution and asked the court so to rule. In answer thereto the court made an order, so much of which as is necessary to a proper understanding of the case is as follows: “It further appearing to the court here that the present indictment against the accused charges her with the murder of Nannie Blackwell, of which said offence one Robert Boswell hath been tried at this term, and against whom this accused, Rebecca Ann Lyon, was used and examined as a witness on behalf of the state, it is declared by the court here that it is not just and right that the accused be tried for the crime whereof she now stands indicted, and it is therefore ordered that the said Rebecca Ann Lyon be not put to answer the present indictment and to say whether she be guilty or not guilty of the felony and murder whereof she stands charged.”
Upon the announcement of the decision the solicitor remarked that he had other charges against the prisoner and was awaiting the results of an analysis of the contents of the stomach of Ned Lyon, and thereupon the prisoner was remanded to the custody of the sheriff.
At spring term, 1879, the solicitor proposed again to arraign and try the prisoner for the murder of Nannie Blackwell, and on the renewal of the motion of her counsel for an order of discharge, he stated that it was not his intention at the present term to bring on the trial of the charge for the murder of Ned Lyon, if the prisoner was entitled to be discharged from the other indictment. The court refused the motion for the prisoner, but continued the case that she might have time to apply for such relief as her counsel should advise.
This is a summary of the material facts contained in the application for the certiorari and in the record sent up in obedience to the writ, and they do not call for or authorize any interference by this court in the proceedings depending in the superior court below. It is plain they constitute no legal defence against the prosecution, or if they did, they could be put in proper form and made available at the trial. The prisoner's evidence was not elicited upon any promise or expectation, aside from that produced by the act of examination, of release or other individual advantage to the witness to be derived therefrom; and if such assurance had been given, its only effect would be to influence the solicitor to enter a nolle prosequi under a proper sense of official...
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...this defendant, Frazier. Nothing in the use of that testimony by the State precludes the State from now prosecuting this defendant. State v. Lyon, 81 N.C. 600; State v. Newell, 172 N.C. 933, 90 S.E. The record on this appeal discloses that, following Frazier's testimony in the trial of West......
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