State v. Singleton, No. 19386

• Court: United States State Supreme Court of South Carolina
• Writing for the Court: MOSS
• Citation: 187 S.E.2d 518,258 S.C. 125
• Parties: The STATE, Respondent, v. George SINGLETON and Ernest Charles Jones, Appellants.
• Decision Date: 09 March 1972
• Docket Number: No. 19386

Page 518

187 S.E.2d 518 258 S.C. 125 The STATE, Respondent,
v.
George SINGLETON and Ernest Charles Jones, Appellants. No. 19386. Supreme Court of South Carolina. March 9, 1972.

[258 S.C. 126]

Page 519

Matthew J. Perry, of Jenkins, Perry & Pride, Columbia, Franklin R. DeWitt, Conway, and Ernest A. Finney, Jr., Sumter, for appellants.

Solicitor J. M. Long, Jr., Conway, Atty. Gen. Daniel R. McLeod and Asst. Atty. Gen. Emmet H. Clair, Columbia, for respondent.

MOSS, Chief Justice:

George Singleton and Ernest Charles Jones, the appellants herein, were arrested on April 4, 1970 and charged with the offense of rape. Thereafter, at the 1971 March Term of the Court of General Sessions for Horry County, they were brought to trial and convicted, with a recommendation to mercy. Each of the appellants was sentenced pursuant to Section 16--72, of the Code.

At appropriate stages of the trial, the appellants made motions for a directed verdict on the ground that the State had failed to establish that they committed the offense of [258 S.C. 127] rape as charged in the indictment. The appellants, following the verdict, renewed their motion for a directed verdict or in the alternative for a new trial, upon grounds which will be hereinafter discussed. These motions were refused and this appeal followed.

It appears from the record that on Friday, April 3, 1970, at about 10:30 P.M., the prosecutrix, a nurse, reported for duty on the night shift at Ocean View Memorial Hospital in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina. Approximately one hour later, she was called home to attend her sick child. Thereafter, between 1:00 and 1:30 A.M. o'clock, April 4, 1970, she returned to Ocean View Memorial Hospital to go back to work. When she stopped her car in a parking area outside the rear entrance of the hospital, she noticed that a car had pulled in behind her and she sat in her car for a minute before stopping her engine. The other car proceeded to a point about four parking spaces beyond her car and stopped. She noticed that there were two men in the other car, one of whom got out of the car and walked towards the rear

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door of the hospital. She then got out of her car to go in the hospital, but was stopped by the man whom she thought had gone into the hospital. He grabbed her by the arm and told her to come with him, and he put a pistol to her back. The other man who had gotten out of the car, came to where she was and grabbed her by the other arm. She was then taken to the car where she sat between the two men. As they drove from the hospital lot, one of the men kept pointing a gun at her. The car was driven some distance to a clearing in the woods where they stopped. The prosecutrix trix was required to disrobe and both men forcibly raped her twice. After about two hours she was permitted to dress and was driven back to the hospital where she reported the incident to other nurses, a policeman and a physician who examined her.

The appellants were arrested, without a warrant, in Myrtle Beach during the early evening of April 4, 1970, by Lt. G. [258 S.C. 128] W. Thompkins of the police department of that city and placed in the city jail.

The first question for determination is whether there was sufficient probable cause to justify the arrest of the appellants. It is their contention that the court erred in refusing to hold that they were unlawfully arrested and all articles seized or obtained from them were inadmissible as evidence.

We have held that it is the function of the court to determine from the evidence whether a warrantless arrest was supported by probable cause. State v. Hamilton, 251 S.C. 1, 159 S.E.2d 607.

In the Hamilton case we quoted with approval the following:

'The applicable federal doctrine sanctions a warrantless search and seizure incident to a lawful arrest. Draper v. United States, 358 U.S. 307, 79 S.Ct. 329, 3 L.Ed.2d 327. The point that the exhibits were the fruits of an unlawful search and seizure is bottomed upon the claim that the appellant's arrest without a warrant was illegal. The following quotation from Beck v. State of Ohio, 379 U.S. 89, 85 S.Ct. 223, 13 L.Ed.2d 142, is applicable and states the test which must be applied in resolving this issue:

"The constitutional validity of the search in this case, then, must depend upon the constitutional validity of the petitioner's arrest. Whether that arrest was constitutionally valid depends in turn upon whether at the moment the arrest was made, the officers had probable cause to make it--whether at that moment the facts and circumstances within their knowledge and of which they had reasonably trustworthy information were sufficient to warrant a prudent man in believing that the petitioner had committed * * * an offense."

The evidence shows that during the prosecutrix's interview with the police she gave the officer a description of her assailants, the automobile used and of various articles that she observed within the automobile. Immediately following [258 S.C. 129] this, the officer put out an 'all points bulletin'. Thereafter, he went to the scene of the alleged crime and there found tennis shoe tracks and automobile tire tracks in the soil.

It appears that officer Thompkins of the Myrtle Beach Police Department came on duty on 6:00 P.M. on April 4, 1970, and was given the information that the prosecutrix had been raped and, as a result of what he was told, he was on the look-out for an old blue four-door car which would have a tape deck in the front center of the dash and a box in the right front floorboard. He was also alerted that there would be a pair of brown buckle type shoes in the car and two suspects. They were described as: (1) colored male, approximately 5 8 in height, 20--27 years of age, small and thin build; and (2) colored male, larger and huskier than number one and maybe older, and they were wearing...