State v. Martin

• Decision Date: 19 December 1921
• Docket Number: 10782.
• Citation: 110 S.E. 78,118 S.C. 21
• Parties: STATE v. MARTIN ET AL.
• Court: South Carolina Supreme Court

110 S.E. 78

118 S.C. 21

STATE v. MARTIN ET AL.

No. 10782.

Supreme Court of South Carolina

December 19, 1921

Appeal from General Sessions Circuit Court of Richland County; W. H Townsend, Judge.

Heyward Martin and others were convicted of breaking into and stealing from a store, and appeal. Reversed.

Graydon & Graydon, of Columbia, for appellants.

A. F Spigener, Sol., of Columbia, for the State.

FRASER J.

The case shows the following:

"The above stated case was brought on for trial at the May term, 1921, of the court of general sessions for Richland county.

The indictment was in the usual form, and charged that the defendant, in the first count, had broken into the Palmetto Produce Exchange, a corporation, in the nighttime, with intent to steal, take, and carry away the goods and chattels of said corporation.

In the second count, they were charged with having stolen and carried away from said storehouse three buckets of lard and three cakes, all of the value of $8, of the proper goods and chattels of the said produce exchange.

Testimony.

The testimony offered by the state was to the effect that the store had been broken into and robbed. Greene, the witness said he was the manager of said store; that some lard and cakes had been brought to the store the next Monday, after the store was broken open on Saturday night; that the goods were similar to the ones that were taken out of the store but he could not swear that they were the same goods. The same line of goods were handled by several other merchants in Columbia.

The state then put up Mr. Marsh, one of the rural policemen. He testified: That he and another policeman were going down the road in an automobile about 1 o'clock at night, when they passed three men sitting on the side of the road. That as they passed he saw the men, and stopped his car and turned around in the road, and that the three men jumped up and ran. That his companion followed one of the men, and shot and wounded him. After he was shot down they arrested him, and found it was Heyward Martin. That they had no warrant for the arrest of any of the men. That they took Heyward Martin to the hospital, and got there about 2 o'clock at night. That they did not see any goods that night, but on the next day (Sunday) about 10 o'clock a. m., they went back to the place where the men were, and found the lard and the cakes, sitting one or two feet from where the men had been sitting

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