State v. Phelps

• Decision Date: 21 September 1955
• Docket Number: No. 2,2
• Citation: 242 N.C. 540,89 S.E.2d 132
• Court: North Carolina Supreme Court
• Parties: STATE, v. Willie PHELPS.

Page 132

89 S.E.2d 132

242 N.C. 540

STATE, v. Willie PHELPS.

No. 2

Supreme Court of North Carolina.

Sept. 21, 1955

Carter W. Jones, Ahoskie, and John B. McMullan, Elizabeth City, for defendant, appellant.

William B. Rodman, Jr., Atty. Gen., and T. W. Bruton, Asst. Atty. Gen., for the State.

PARKER, Justice.

The defendant introduced no evidence. He has one assignment of error: the failure of the Trial Court to sustain his motion for judgment of nonsuit made at the close of the State's case.

James Edward Monds, a 16 year old boy, lived about a mile north of the village of Corapeake on North Carolina State Highway No. 32. After 6:00 p.m. on 8 December 1954, he left home to walk to Corapeake to obtain a ride with some of his classmates to Sunbury High School. Woodrow Polson driving a truck on this highway to Corpeake passed Monds about 6:20 p.m. Monds was walking south on the east side of the pavement about 3 feet from the shoulder. About an hour and a half later Polson saw Monds' dead body lying on the west side of the highway, a good distance from where he saw him walking.

State Highway No. 32 is one of the main roads of travel from North Carolina to Virginia. Joe Eason's home is on the east side of this highway about a mile north of Corapeake. Between 6:30 and 7:00 p.m. on the same night he was in his back yard about 50 or 75 feet from the highway, and saw two automobiles travelling south about 75 or 80 miles an hour each and about 100 yards apart. On cross-examination he said he was guessing at the speed. He watched these automobiles until they reached a wooded area 400 to 500 yards south, which blocked his vision. After he lost sight of the automobiles he heard 'a slam' in the direction where he last saw the automobiles. He ran to the highway, and saw down the highway to the south an automobile with tail lights burning parked on the west side of the highway. After he heard the 'slam' two automobiles passed his house going south. About 30 minutes later he went south on the highway to the place where he saw the parked automobile and heard the 'slam,' and saw lying on the west side of the highway the dead body of Monds. Eason lives about one-half mile north from where he saw the body.

The night was clear and cold: snow was in the highway ditch, but the pavement and shoulder were clear and the road dry. Between 7:15 and 7:30 p.m. A. S. Godwin, a State Highway Patrolman, arrived at the scene, and saw Monds' dead body lying on the west shoulder at the edge of the pavement. At that point the highway was straight for one-half mile in each direction. The pavement was 20 feet wide and the shoulders 7 feet. Upon arrival Godwin saw the defendant Phelps and his 1954 Pontiac automobile parked in the west lane of traffic pointed south and 77 feet north of Monds' body. A Ford automobile belonging to Sidney Parker was parked on the west shoulder of the highway about 25 feet south of the body. A leakage of antifreeze could be traced back in a northerly direction from the Pontiac about 180 feet. The antifreeze first 'hit' the highway 3 feet to the left of the center line and for 50 or 60 feet this antifreeze was in the east lane of traffic. 185 feet north from where the leakage of antifreeze began, there were easily seen blood spots in the center line of the highway in an easterly direction. There was a shoe on the pavement in the east lane of traffic south of the blood spots, and about 85 feet north of the point where the antifreeze leakage began, and a button with a piece of apparel attached, matching a missing button from Monds' shirt, in the same lane of traffic about 35 feet south of the shoe. A key was found on the east shoulder 18 inches from the pavement and 250 feet north of the parked Pontiac. Monds' mother identified the shoe and key as her son's property. The distance from the beginning of the blood spots to the parked Pontiac was 365 feet. Godwin found undercoating from under the left front fender of the Pontiac 18 inches on the left or east shoulder 268 feet north of where the Pontiac was parked: the undercoating was east and south of the blood spots. Undercoating was found missing under the left front fender of the Pontiac.

The left front fender of the Pontiac had been hit with sufficient impact to move it back enough to close the side door, so it could not be opened on the driver's side. The hood was bent. The grille was pushed back into the radiator, and the radiator into the fan puncturing it. Around the damaged area there was a considerable amount of blood in spots. Blood spots were visible on the front fender, bumper, grille, hood, the lower left side of the windshield, and down the left side all the way to the tail light.

There was no damage to the front or side of the Ford. The only visible signs on the Ford were blood spots underneath and around the vicinity of the left front wheel on the undercarriage. The left front wheel had a considerable amount of blood on the inside. None of its mechanism was bent or damaged.

There were no skid marks made by the tires of the Pontiac so that its course could be traced. Patrolman Godwin testified: 'I found no evidence that Phelps' car had been to the left of the center of the highway north of the point where I found the blood spots. The only physical evidence which I found that Willie Phelps' car was at any time on the left of the center of the highway was south of the blood spots, and between the blood spots and where his car was parked.'

H. E. Butcher, and embalmer from Suffolk, Virginia, examined Monds' body the night he was killed. He testified that Monds had two compound fractures on both ligs with the bones protruding through the skin out forward about two inches from the knee: evidently, he was struck in the back to force the bones out that way. He had a broken neck, indication of a fractured skull and a bruise on his buttocks.

The defendant Phelps made the following statement to Patrolman Godwin: He was driving his Pontiac south, he was alone in the car, and a car 200 to 300 yards behind had been following him several minutes. He was meeting a truck travelling north which dimmed its lights. That Monds walked from behind the truck, he did not know from which side he came, nor where he was going, and that he struck him in his right lane, west lane, near the center line. That the first time he saw Monds was immediately following the passing of the truck, and that Monds appeared from behind the truck immediately after it passed. That he was right on Monds when he first saw him, and stopped as soon as possible. That his car was practically new and nothing was wrong with it. Parker's Ford passed him on the left after he struck Monds. That when his Pontiac came to a stop Monds' body was in the position where it was when Godwin arrived, and Monds was dead. At no time did he cross the center line into the east lane of traffic.

There was evidence tending to show that Monds' body was dragged by Parker's Ford from a point far northwardly on the highway to where it came to rest. There were blood smears for 225 feet on the pavement caused by dragging the body. The beginning of the dragging started off with small blood spots and shoe marks and there was a shoe close by. A warrant was sworn out against Parker for manslaughter, which is pending.

The shoe, button, key and undercoating from the Pontiac were north and east of the skid marks of Parker's Ford.

Culpable negligence, from which death proximately ensues, makes the actor guilty of manslaughter, and under some circumstances guilty of murder. State v. Cope, 204 N.C. 28, 167 S.e. 456; State v. Wooten, 228 N.C. 628, 46 S.E.2d 868; State v. Norris, 242 N.C. 47, 86 S.E.2d 916.

Culpable negligence in the law of crimes necessarily implies something more than actionable negligence in the law of torts. State v. Stansell, 203 N.C. 69, 164 S.E. 580; State v. Cope, supra; State v. Becker, 241 N.C. 321, 85 S.E.2d 327.

'Culpable negligence is such recklessness or carelessness, proximately resulting in injury or death, as imports a thoughtless disregard of consequences or a heedless indifference to the safety and rights of others. * * * An intentional, willful, or wanton violation of a statute or ordinance, designed for the protection of human...