State v. McIntosh

• Decision Date: 12 May 1913
• Citation: 78 S.E. 327,94 S.C. 439
• Parties: STATE v. McINTOSH et al.
• Court: South Carolina Supreme Court

78 S.E. 327

94 S.C. 439

STATE v. McINTOSH et al.

Supreme Court of South Carolina

May 12, 1913

Appeal from General Sessions Circuit Court of Florence County; S.W G. Shipp, Judge.

"To be officially reported."

McNeill & Oliver, Willcox & Willcox, and Henry E. Davis, all of Florence, for appellants. Walter H. Wells, of Florence, and J. Monroe Spears, of Darlington, for the State.

HYDRICK J.

On March 6, 1912, Andrew Jackson, a little boy eight or ten years old, of the city of Florence disappeared. On the second day thereafter his dead body was found in an empty box car on the repair tracks of the railroad company. The circumstances indicated that he had been murdered. The shoe tracks of a man were found leading to and from the car. They showed certain peculiar characteristics by which it was thought the shoe that made them might be identified. A few days after the discovery of the body, four colored boys, William Foxworth and Freddie McIntosh, and the defendants, Harry McIntosh and John Williams, were arrested and detained in the city jail on suspicion of being guilty of the murder. While they were in jail, the chief of police ordered the defendant Harry McIntosh to take off his shoe and give it to him, and he did so. The shoe was compared with the tracks found near the car and it was put on the foot of another person, who made a track beside one of them for the purpose of comparison. The shoe and testimony of the similarity of the track made by it to those going to and from the car was admitted in evidence against the objection of the defendant McIntosh.

After the four boys had been transferred to the county jail, William Foxworth and Freddie McIntosh made statements to the sheriff implicating the defendants. These statements were reduced to writing by the sheriff and signed by William and Freddie. The sheriff then took these boys into the presence of the defendants and read the statements over in their presence and hearing and asked William and Freddie if they were correct and true, and both said they were, but the defendants both said that they were false, and that the other boys had made them to exculpate and save themselves. At the trial the state put up William and Freddie as its witnesses. William's testimony was, with slight variation, according to his statement. He admitted, however, on cross-examination, that when he was first put in jail and asked if he knew anything about the murder he had denied any knowledge of it, and said his reason for doing so was that he was afraid he would get himself into it. He said also that the sheriff told him that, if he knew anything about it, it would be better for him to tell it, and that if he did not tell it and get himself out he (the sheriff) would get all four of them. Freddie denied the truth of his statement in every material particular, and swore that it had been extorted from him by fear and cruel treatment. The sheriff denied that the statements had been obtained by duress, and said that they were voluntary; but he admitted that, when he read them over in the presence of the defendants, both defendants said they were not true, and that the boys had made them to get out of it themselves. After William and Freddie had testified at the trial, the sheriff was allowed to prove their statements to him, and they were admitted in evidence, against the objection of defendants.

The first exception assigns error in admitting in evidence Harry McIntosh's shoe and the testimony tending to show that the tracks at the car were made by it, on the ground that it violated the inhibition of the Constitution (section 17, art 1) that no person "shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself." The admission of the evidence did not violate the constitutional right of the defendant. In State v. Atkinson, 40 S.C. 363, 18 S.E. 1021, 42 Am. St. Rep. 877, certain pieces of newspaper taken from the room of the defendant, John Atkinson, which the witness had entered without authority of law, were admitted in evidence for the purpose of showing that they corresponded with pieces of paper picked up at the scene of the homicide, which...