State v. Mcdonald

Decision Date14 July 1937
Docket NumberNo. 14512.,14512.
CourtSouth Carolina Supreme Court
Partiesstate. v. Mcdonald.

192 S.E. 365
184 S.C. 290

state.
v.
Mcdonald.

No. 14512.

Supreme Court of South Carolina.

July 14, 1937.


[192 S.E. 366]

Appeal from General Sessions Circuit Court of Fairfield County; A. L. Gaston, Judge.

Furman McDonald was convicted of murder, and he appeals.

Affirmed.

Thurmond & Buzhardt, of McCormick, and McDonald, Macaulay & McDonald, of Winnsboro, for appellant.

[192 S.E. 367]

W. G. Finley, Sol., of York, for the State.

FISHBURNE, Justice.

The defendant, Furman McDonald, was convicted of the murder of H. B. Thompson, Jr., at the June term of the court of general sessions, 1936, in Fairfield county, and sentenced by the presiding judge to death by electrocution.

McDonald is a white man, and was 43 years of age at the time of his trial. He is married, and is the father of four children. The deceased, H. B. Thompson, Jr., was a lad of thirteen years, who lived with his parents, Mr. and Mrs. H. B. Thompson, in the Greenbriar section of Fairfield county, at Mossydale, which is about a quarter of a mile from the home of McDonald, in the same county.

On the night of September 29, 1935, between 12 and 1 o'clock, McDonald left his home in his automobile and drove to the home of the Thompsons. He stopped his car directly in front of the house, with the headlights shining on the front door. He then proceeded to break into the house by bursting open this door. Finding the elder Thompson in bed, he clubbed him into unconsciousness with a shotgun. Mrs. Thompson, who was awake when the defendant entered the house, and who occupied the same bed with her husband, succeeded in grasping and holding the gun so as to stop any further attack upon her husband. Aroused by the violent uproar, the deceased, who occupied an adjoining room, came to the connecting door, screaming and crying, and asked what the disturbance was about. Whereupon, McDonald, making the statement, "You are the one that I want, " shot at him. The deceased begged the defendant not to shoot him again, but the defendant shoved the boy from him, and shot him the second time, inflicting the mortal wound. Reloading the gun, McDonald made the threat that he was going to shoot Mr. Thompson, but he desisted when Mrs. Thompson again struggled with him for its possession. He then left the house, but before leaving he struck her several times with the weapon. The deceased died in the office of Dr. G. C. Buchanan in the town of Winnsboro within a few hours after he was shot.

Before leaving his home that night, McDonald severely beat his little ten year old girl, in the effort to extort from her the statement that the deceased had cut her. In order to make him discontinue the punishment, the little girl finally made the statement that H. B. Thompson, Jr., had cut her on the stomach with a knife. This assertion is admittedly untrue, but it was immediately following it that the defendant went to the Thompson home. There is testimony in the record that the defendant continually talked about the Thompsons, and some time prior to the homicide, made the statement that Thompson and his boy should be run out of the community; and just before leaving his home that night, he said that he intended to kill all of them. There is also testimony tending to show that he was drinking on the night of the homicide.

This brief statement outlines the setting of the crime.

Upon his trial, which occurred about eight months thereafter, the defendant interposed the plea of insanity, and testified that he knew and remembered nothing of what had occurred on the night of the homicide. To every question relating to the crime, he answered: "I don't know." From the sentence imposed, McDonald appeals to this court, charging error in the refusal of his motion for a continuance of the case, the refusal to stand aside certain jurors for cause, and in the refusal to order a new trial.

Upon the opening day of the court, counsel for the appellant made and argued a motion for a continuance of the case, based upon the inability of Mr. Roger Smith, of Fairfield county, a former employer of the defendant, and of Mr. J. Frank Mattison, probate judge for McCormick county, to attend the trial on account of illness. The motion was denied, and the case was set for trial the next day, Tuesday, June 9th. On that day the motion was renewed, upon the same ground, and was again refused. It is argued that the motion for continuance should have been granted because these two witnesses for the defense were highly material.

It appears that the defendant was employed at a sawmill of Mr. Smith, in Fairfield county, for six or seven years immediately prior to the homicide, and it was contended by counsel that Mr. Smith was relied upon to prove the mental condition of the defendant and his alleged periods of insanity or "spells, " during those years.

[192 S.E. 368]

The defendant was a native of the county of McCormick, and several witnesses from that county attended the trial and testified as to the defendant's mental condition during the various periods that they knew him. Counsel for the appellant undertook to show, by these and other witnesses, the mental characteristics and the alleged erratic conduct of the defendant from his earliest years, and to prove that the defendant had exhibited symptoms of mental derangement from the time he was a child until the date of the trial.

We can discover no ground for the charge of abuse of discretion in refusing the motion for continuance.

The following remarks of the presiding judge as to the absence of these two witnesses fully vindicate his refusal to grant a continuance on that ground:

"Now, in regard to the absence of these witnesses, neither one of those witnesses claim to be present at the time of the occurrence--at the time this unfortunate killing...

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