State v. Smith

• Citation: 67 S.E.2d 82,220 S.C. 224
• Decision Date: 27 September 1951
• Docket Number: No. 16547,16547
• Parties: STATE v. SMITH.
• Court: United States State Supreme Court of South Carolina

Page 82

67 S.E.2d 82

220 S.C. 224

STATE v. SMITH.

No. 16547.

Supreme Court of South Carolina.

Sept. 27, 1951.

Charles & Charles and A. R. McElhaney, Greenwood, for appellant.

Hugh Beasley, Sol., Greenwood, for respondent.

STUKES, Justice.

Appellant, a Greenwood textile worker, has appealed from his conviction and life sentence for the poison murder of Hazel Arnold Smith, his bride of less than two months. He was previously married and very recently divorced, of which latter his first wife denied knowledge although she was separated from appellant and coopertated in the commencement of a divorce action. She gave damaging testimony against him which will be included in substance in the later summary of the State's evidence.

There are presented seven numbered 'Questions Involved' which appear on the first page of appellant's brief in accord with Rule 8 of this court. Each of them will be stated and discussed, but not in the sequence presented. The first and sixth may be conveniently considered together, but others will necessarily overlap as will be seen. They are as follows:

1. Was it error for the trial court to refuse the defendant's motions for a directed verdict of not guilty?

6. Did the trial court err in refusing the defendant's motion for a new trial upon rendition of the verdict?

Motions for directed verdict of acquittal were made at the close of the State's case and at the end of all of the evidence, and were overruled. The grounds of them were renewed by motion for new trial after verdict. Naturally these motions consisted mainly of the contention that the evidence was insufficient to support a verdict of guilty. Other points of the motions are preserved in other questions on appeal and will be considered in connection with them. Review of the evidence is necessary, and in greater detail because the case depends on circumstances. Of course, poison cases are ordinarily provable only by circumstantial evidence. One is not apt to see another administer poison to his victim. State v. Epes, 209 S.C. 246, 39 S.E.2d 769, 770. In the cited case it was said: 'In proving corpus delicti, the law demands the best proof which in the nature of the case is obtainable. Direct and positive evidence is not essential. It is now well established that the elements constituting the corpus delicti in a homicide case--the death of the person whose life is alleged to have been taken feloniously, and the criminal agency of another in taking the life of such person--may be sufficiently proved by presumptive or circumsantial evidence, where that is the best evidence obtainable. State v. Thomas, 159 S.C. 76, 156 S.E. 169; State v. Gillis, 73 S.C. 318, 53 S.E. 487, 5 L.R.A.,N.S., 571, 114 Am.St.Rep. 95, 6 Ann.Cas. 993.' Again at page 267 of 209 S.C., at page 778 of 39 S.E.2d: 'We are not concerned in this case with the weight and effect of the evidence or the credibility of the witnesses. These things are within the province of the jury. It is for us to determine solely whether there was sufficient evidence to go to the jury tending to prove the corpus delicti or criminal agency of the accused beyond a reasonable doubt.

'Much has been said in the arguments of counsel concerning the nature, weight and character of circumstantial evidence. But all that we should require of circumstantial evidence is that there shall be positive proof of the facts from which the inference of guilt is to be drawn, and that that inference is the only one which could reasonably be drawn from the facts. All the circumstances taken together must point in the direction of guilt to a moral certainty to the exclusion of any other reasonable hypothesis. State v. Kimbrell, 191 S.C. 238, 4 S.E.2d 121.' That is in harmony with the principles enunciated in the cases which are pressed in argument here, namely, State v. Kimbrell, supra; State v. Dornberg, 192 S.C. 513, 7 S.E.2d 467; State v. Edwards, 194 S.C. 410, 10 S.E.2d 587; State v. Powell, 202 S.C. 432, 25 S.E.2d 479; State v. Takis, 204 S.C. 140, 28 S.E.2d 679, and State v. Manis, 214 S.C. 99, 51 S.E.2d 370.

In appellate review of the propriety of the submission of the factual issue of guilt to the jury this court considers the evidence and inferences in the light most favorable for conviction, which they will reasonably support. 'It must also be kept in mind that on an appeal from the refusal of the court to direct a verdict, the evidence and the inferences which may reasonably be drawn therefrom, must be viewed in the most favorable light for the State. State v. Brown, 205 S.C. 514, 32 S.E.2d 825; State v. Turner, 117 S.C. 470, 109 S.E. 119; State v. Quinn, 111 S.C. 174, 97 S.E. 62, 3 A.L.R. 1500.' State v. Epes, supra. Apparently our last authority on the subject is State v. Riley, 1951, 219 S.C. 112, 64 S.E.2d 127, which was also a homicide appeal, opinion by Mr. Justice Taylor, in which it was said: 'When considering a motion for a directed verdict in favor of a defendant, it is not the function of the Court to pass upon the weight of the evidence, but to determine its sufficiency to support the verdict. Where there is any evidence, however slight, on which the jury may justifiably find the existence or nonexistence of material facts in issue, or if the evidence is of such character that different conclusions as to such facts reasonably may be drawn therefrom, the issue should be submitted to the jury. State v. Prince, 165 S.C. 115, 162 S.E. 777; State v. Gellis, 158 S.C. 471, 155 S.E. 849; State v. Rush, 129 S.C. 43, 123 S.E. 765. The general rule is that, if there be any evidence tending to prove the fact in issue or which reasonably conduces to its conclusion as a fairly logical and legitimate deduction and not merely such as raises a suspicion or conjecture in regard to it, the case should be submitted to the jury. State v. Roddey, 126 S.C. 499, 120 S.E. 359; State v. Villepigue, 127 S.C. 392, 121 S.E. 258; State v. Walker, 138 S.C. 293, 136 S.E. 215.'

The appellant and the deceased during the latter part of January 1950, which was before their marriage on February 4, moved into an apartment in what is described in the testimony as the 'Old Hotel' in the village of Hodges in Greenwood County. Several other families lived in other apartments in the same building and apparently all of the adult members testified for the prosecution. One of the men said that the deceased became ill on Thursday night before her death on Monday, April 3. On Friday midday he met appellant going away from the house and when the witness entered he saw appellant's bedroom door open, which was very unusual, and the deceased was lying across the bed, sick. A lady tenant came in and the witness left the room. He saw the deceased again about 5 o'clock that afternoon when she was vomiting in the sink on the back porch, the witness said, 'the greenest stuff I believe I ever saw come out of a person.' Appellant was not at home often and made no provision for any one to be with his wife when he was away. On Saturday afternoon he asked the witness to let him have some coal which the witness agreed to do expressly only on account of the deceased and asked appellant: 'Aren't you ashamed of the way you treat that woman, letting her lay there and die without a doctor?' Appellant replied: 'Oh, I've been giving her medicine.' This witness did not work and was about the house practically all of the time but was away on Sunday. On the day of the death, which was Monday, appellant called on the front porch for some one to come quick, that he believed his wife was having some kind of spell and dying. The witness went in, found the deceased dead and closed her mouth and eyes. Appellant then asked him to summon a doctor but when one was reached over the telephone, he declined to come when told of the death. Another neighbor called the father of the deceased. Appellant usually kept the doors to his apartment closed.

Another of the tenants, who moved out on Saturday before the death on Monday, on the preceding Saturday night came in from a late show and was requested by appellant to 'go down the road and try to get her (the deceased) to come back home' or take her to Greenwood to her father. The witness so tried, overtook the deceased who was walking and gave her the message from appellant, but she refused. However, the witness saw her at home next day. He again saw her on Friday before her death, when she was very sick. He overheard arguments between appellant and the deceased. The wife of this witness also testified that she went into the bedroom of the deceased about noon on Friday before her death and found her very sick and vomiting from mouth and nostrils, and the deceased said that she was blind and knew that she was going to die, and that appellant had gone to get some one. However, no doctor came. The witness had overheard arguments between the couple. She and the deceased were friends and appellant was overheard to tell the deceased not to visit the rooms of the witness anymore. The latter incident was about two weeks before the death. The witness knew nothing about insurance having been taken out except what the deceased told her. Appellant did not stay regularly with the deceased, but she was home all the time. Asked on cross examination wherein appellant neglected his wife, the witness replied: 'He didn't have a doctor there for one thing. That looked like neglect to me.' And when asked whether appellant appeared to be affectionate and attentive to the deceased, the witness said, 'I don't think so.'

The State's witnesses whose testimony has just been reviewed, and another who lived in the same apartment building with appellant and his wife, testified that they new of no rats in the building, which was in reply to other testimony that appellant explained to the investigating officers that he bought poison to kill rats at home.

The sheriff testified that he began an investigation of the death very shortly...