State v. Saunders
| Decision Date | 11 January 1957 |
| Docket Number | No. 363,363 |
| Court | North Carolina Supreme Court |
| Parties | STATE, v. Roy SAUNDERS. |
H. Bryce Parker and Wesley Bailey, Winston-Salem, for defendant, appellant.
George B. Patton, Atty. Gen., T. W. Bruton, Asst. Atty. Gen., for the State.
The State's evidence relative to the plans to commit the offenses charged and the means by which they were carried out consisted of the testimony of Kraeuter, the accomplice, and of B. B. Price, the victim. However, the defendant, on crossexamination, made many admissions fending to support Kraeuter's story. He admitted he and Waldemaier had been in partnership; that Waldemaier took Kraeuter and another man to the defendant's home in Washington on Monday preceding the hold-up; that the defendant took Kraeuter to his basement (where Kraeuter testified the plans were made). He admitted riding the bus with Kraeuter and the latter's companion from Washington to Winston-Salem as Kraeuter testified. He admitted making inquiry for Price at the Southside Poolroom and Filling Station just before Kraeuter and Calabria took Price out to rob him. While the story told by Kraeuter and that told by the defendant are in harmony in many points, they are in conflict with respect to the defendant's participation in the plan to rob Price or to commit any other violation of the law. The defendant contends, therefore, Kraeuter's story of the defendant's participation is unsupported and the State's evidence was insufficient to justify conviction.
The courts of the several states are not in agreement as to whether the testimony of an admitted accomplice is sufficient to convict. Our Court, however, adheres to the rule that such evidence, even if unsupported, is sufficient if it satisfies the jury of guilt beyond a reasonable doubt. State v. Tilley, 239 N.C. 245, 79 S.E.2d 473, citing cases. Therefore, the defendant's motions to dismiss were properly overruled.
The defendant assigns as error the admission of the evidence of Miss Caldwell that the distance from Bristol, Virginia, to Charlotte, North Carolina, and from Bristol to Winston-Salem is the same--157 miles; and from Charlotte to Winston-Salem is 79 miles. These facts were within her knowledge obtained over a period of 18 years as travel counsel and her testimony with respect thereto was properly admitted. Jordan v. Glickman, 219 N.C. 388, 14 S.E.2d 40. However, we think the court should have taken judicial notice of these distances without proof. In the early case of Furniture Co. v. Southern Express Co., 144 N.C. 639, 57 S.E. 458, 459, decided in 1907, this Court said: '* * * It is generally held that the courts will take judicial notice of the placing of the prominent towns within their jurisdiction, and especially of county sites, and their accessibility by railroads connecting them with trunk lines of the country; and there is well considered authority to the effect that courts may also take such notice of the distance to prominent business centers of other states, etc.' A much stronger case for taking such notice can be made out today when almost every town in the country is connected by a ribbon of concrete or asphalt over which a constant stream of traffic flows. Every filling station has maps available to the traveler without charge. Highway signs at road crossings give both distance and direction. In fact, so complete and so general is the common knowledge of places and distances that the court may be presumed to know the distances between important cities and towns in this State and likewise in adjoining states. Am.Jur., Vol. 20, sec. 57, p. 80; 32 C.J.S., Evidence, § 730; Wigmore on Evidence, 3rd Ed., Vol. 9, sec. 2575 (see pocket supplement, 1955); Chappell v. Stallings, 237 N.C. 213, 74 S.E.2d 624; Mallard v. Eastern Carolina Regional Housing Authority, 221 N.C. 334, 20 S.E.2d 281; Hart v. Commonwealth, 131 Va. 726, 109 S.E. 582. The...
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