State v. Scott
| Decision Date | 02 August 1946 |
| Docket Number | 15860. |
| Citation | 38 S.E.2d 902,209 S.C. 61 |
| Parties | STATE v. SCOTT. |
| Court | South Carolina Supreme Court |
F. R. Hemingway and M. A. Shuler, both of Kingstree for appellant.
Solicitor F. A. McLeod, of Sumter, and Philip C. Stoll, of Kingstree for respondent.
The appellant, Lewis Scott, was convicted of the murder of Walter Evans and sentenced to death by electrocution. From this judgment he appeals.
Mr Evans, a white man, was night policeman of the town of Greeleyville. Shortly after midnight on September 14, 1945 he was found dead on the side of the road near the outskirts of the town, about 60 feet from a street light. He had been shot through the chest with a pistol.
The appellant, a negro farm hand twenty six years of age, was arrested at his father's home just before daylight on the morning of the Homicide by the sheriff of Williamsburg County, after several other suspects had been investigated and interviewed. He was indicted and tried on November 5, 1945. Having no counsel, the court appointed Mr. Shuler and Mr. Hemingway, two members of the Williamsburg Bar, to represent him. The appeal comes here in forma pauperis.
The chief question presented by the exceptions is whether the court erred in submitting to the jury evidence as to an alleged confession by the appellant. There were no eyewitnesses, and the state relied almost entirely upon the confession for a conviction. In passing upon this issue, it becomes necessary to give a brief review of the evidence showing the circumstances under which the confession in question was secured. The defendant contended that it was involuntary and obtained under duress and mistreatment.
Following his arrest on the night of the homicide, the accused was taken to the scene of the killing and from there carried to Kingstree, where he was placed in the county jail. He was stripped by the sheriff, and certain scratches were discovered across his chest, neck and back. He explained these scratches by saying that they had been received in the woods while he was staking an ox. He was then taken by the sheriff to his father's farm near Greeleyville to identify the exact spot where he had received the scratches, and the particular limb which had inflicted them. The defendant was unable to do this. The sheriff testified that he took the appellant back and forth from the jail to Greeleyville two or three times in order to verify various versions given him by the appellant as to his movements prior to the homicide; and that in no instance was a satisfactory explanation offered.
In the county jail, the defendant was under frequent inquisition by the officer. After he had been confined in jail two or three weeks, he stated, according to the sheriff, that it was useless for him to continue denying the commission of the crime. He then confessed to the sheriff in the presence of the deputy sheriff that on the night of September 14, 1945, he had spent several hours in Greeleyville, reaching there about dusk; that he had drunk two bottles of beer and a half pint of liquor. That, wishing to go to a negro dance, he had exchanged clothes with a negro acquaintance, and several hours later was going out of town toward his home in the country when he met Mr. Evans, the policeman. Evans had cautioned him, two or three hours before, that he was drinking too much, and that he had better go home after a while. The defendant stated that when he met the policeman on this second occasion the officer tried to arrest him, and he immediately started resisting and fighting. The officer pulled his pistol and in the ensuing scuffle the defendant got possession of the gun, stepped back two steps, and shot him in the breast. He threw the pistol away a short distance, across a ditch, and went on home. This was the state's testimony.
When the defendant testified on trial, he affirmed the truth of the matter contained in the sheriff's version of his confession, except that he did not get complete possession of the pistol, and did not step back and shoot the officer; nor did he resist arrest. He said that he had no intention of shooting the policeman; that the pistol went off accidentally while he and the officer fought for its possession; that his sole purpose in struggling for the pistol was in order to obtain it so that the officer could not shoot him and so that he could escape in safety. The medical testimony showed that the bullet pierced the officer's chest near the fourth rib and came out his back two inches higher than the point of entrance.
The appellant testified that the confession was wrung from him by the sheriff by mistreatment and violence. He said that several times he was taken from his cell by the sheriff and the deputy sheriff to a room upstairs in the county jail where the sheriff beat him. That he finally made the alleged confession because he did not want to be beaten any more. Both the sheriff and the deputy stated that the confession was entirely voluntary. They denied that the accused had been beaten or coerced in any manner; but there was no denial that he was taken from his cell and carried upstairs several...
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Jackson v. Denno, 62
...of voluntariness). State v. Livingston, 223 S.C. 1, 73 S.E.2d 850, cert. denied, 345 U.S. 959, 73 S.Ct. 944, 97 L.Ed. 1379. State v. Scott, 209 S.C. 61, 38 S.E.2d 902 (question is for the judge in first instance, but if the judge is doubtful or evidence is conflicting, the jury is necessari......
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