State v. Potter
| Decision Date | 25 March 1942 |
| Docket Number | 290. |
| Citation | 19 S.E.2d 257,221 N.C. 153 |
| Parties | STATE v. POTTER. |
| Court | North Carolina Supreme Court |
Criminal prosecution upon indictment charging defendant with being accessory after the fact to a malicious assault with a deadly weapon secretly committed by one Henry Ward with intent to kill, and resulting in serious injury.
The bill of indictment, deleting formalities, charges "that Henry Ward *** on 14th July, 1941 *** unlawfully, wilfully and feloniously, premeditatedly, deliberately and with malice aforethought did in and upon one Claude Sullivan, with a certain deadly weapon, to wit, a knife, secretly make an assault with intent to kill, and him, the said Claude Sullivan, unlawfully, wilfully, feloniously, premeditatedly deliberately and with malice aforethought did stab, cut wound and seriously injure in his back ***", and further charges "that on said day *** M. H. Potter *** well knowing the said Henry Ward to have done and committed the said felonious assault and felony in manner and form aforesaid *** then and there, afterwards *** unlawfully wilfully, feloniously, premeditatedly, deliberately and with malice aforethought, did him, the said Henry Ward, then and there receive, harbor, maintain, comfort, assist and transport away from the scene of the felony, for the purpose of enabling the said Henry Ward, avoid apprehensions ***".
Upon the call of the case in the Superior Court Henry Ward tendered a plea of guilty to secret assault with intent to kill. The defendant pleaded not guilty.
The State offered evidence tending to show in brief this narrative: On the morning of July 14,1941, about 5 o'clock, Claude Sullivan approached M. H. Potter who was sitting in his car on street of Snow Hill, and after Potter had gotten out of his car and walked with Sullivan a short distance down the street, they engaged in an argument about a horse and a mule. They agreed to go before the Chief of Police and have it settled. Thereupon, they entered Potter's car, he on the left under the steering wheel, away from the sidewalk, and Sullivan on the right next to the sidewalk. Though Potter started his motor, they sat there in the car and talked for several minutes. Then "all of a sudden" Potter said to Sullivan, "Get out of my car", and he did so and appeared to turn in direction of his car parked nearby. As he did, Potter said, "I have got your team, and there ain't nothing you can do about it". Whereupon, Sullivan turned and came back to the car, opened the door of it, and, leaning over with his head in the car and feet on pavement, reached with his hands as if he were going to pull Potter out. Henry Ward, a negro employee of Potter, who had come across the street, was standing at the right rear fender of the car with an open knife in his hand. Then, as Sullivan was leaning against or in the car, as narrated by him, Potter's "expression changed and he got as white as a human can get", and "all of a sudden" Henry Ward, without saying anything, and of whose presence, he, Sullivan, was unaware, stabbed Sullivan in the back with the knife. Sullivan cried out "he has killed me", or "he has cut me to death", as variously understood by men on the sidewalk nearby, and "went right down, kinder sideways" on both the running board and pavement. Ward raised his hand to strike with the knife a second time, but, upon being warned by someone nearby not to do it, backed off, and dared the nearby men to come toward him, and then, with knife in hand, got into the car with Potter, who drove away, -- as one witness stated, "the car left there pretty fast".
Around 7 o'clock that morning, Potter, with a negro man in his car, stopped at a filling station at Richland, forty-five miles away from Snow Hill, for service to his car. While there he procured for the negro a ride to Jacksonville, North Carolina, with one Mr. Holt, who was a policeman of that town.
About 8 o'clock same morning, when Sheriff and Chief of Police went to home of Potter in Snow Hill, his automobile was parked around on cross street in driveway of his uncle. Upon being called out and asked about the negro he had carried away, Potter denied that he had taken anyone away, denied that he had been out of town except two or three miles to a man to do some work for him, denied that Sullivan had been cut, and denied that he knew the name of the negro who had cut Sullivan. But, after being...
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