State v. Stanley
| Decision Date | 24 September 1947 |
| Docket Number | 75. |
| Parties | STATE v. STANLEY. |
| Court | North Carolina Supreme Court |
This defendant, Lester Stanley, was tried upon an indictment charging him with the murder of his wife, Shirley Stanley; was convicted of murder in the first degree sentenced to death, and appealed. Parts of the record and evidence sufficient to an understanding of the points discussed in the opinion are summarized in this statement.
At the opening of the trial the defendant moved to quash the bill of indictment because he was not present in court when it was returned and read. The motion was overruled and defendant excepted.
The defendant, Lester Stanley, and Shirley Ruffin were married in June 1944, lived together about three weeks when defendant was drafted for service in the war. While he was gone a daughter was born to them. Stanley returned in September 1946, and thereafter lived with his wife and child in the home of Robert Ruffin, his father-in-law, occupying a bedroom next to that of Ruffin and his wife. Ruffin was a brick mason, and Stanley was employed by him and working with him on March 10, 1947, the day on which the death of Shirley Stanley occurred, on a job four or five blocks from the home and about five minutes walk. On that morning, when Ruffin got ready to go on the job, Stanley insisted that William Rollins, another worker who ordinarily pushed the wheelbarrow containing the bricks, should go in the car with Ruffin and that he should come along with the wheelbarrow after them. As his wife's mother had left earlier for the laundry where she was working, he was thus left alone with his wife and infant at the home. A neighbor came in and engaged Shirley in conversation for a short time and left.
Stanley arrived on the job at the Babcock house about 45 minutes after Ruffin and Rollins had gone to work, began mixing the cement, and remained until they were called to the Ruffin home by the police, reaching thereabout 11:30 o'clock.
Meantime two women had come to the Ruffin house, found the door locked from the inside, and after repeated knocks and calls, went to the back door where they effected an entrance. Terrified at what they saw through the door of a bedroom, one of them took the baby outdoors and the other called Shirley's mother and the police. The latter, on arrival, as stated, called Ruffin.
Shirley Stanley was found in the bedroom of Ruffin and his wife lying on the floor beside the bed, in a grotesque position one pajama leg torn off and lying on the bed, with her throat cut from ear to ear, the blood in a pool around her head. Her clothing was up around her waist and toward her neck, her legs drawn up and spread open. No one was allowed to enter, but the body could be seen from the door. Stanley said:
Spots observed on defendant's overalls which had the appearance of blood led to his arrest and imprisonment. After many denials and conflicting statements he finally made a statement, which in the main he later confirmed by his own testimony on the trial, in which he gave his version of the circumstances leading to and accompanying the death of his wife and his own conduct and part in the final scene and afterward, substantially as follows:
With much repetition he told the officers that he had trouble with his wife the night before and became angry with her because she declined to have marital relations with him, and sat up awhile, smoking. He chose the next morning, said he, to "make up" with her. She repulsed his advances, told him to get out of the house, that she no longer cared for him, and didn't want to see him again. During the course of the argument she left the room and returned with the razor. In pulling the razor away from her, said he, her hand was cut. During the struggle he had his arms around his wife, her back to him, with the razor in his hands, and as he shoved her away from him her throat was accidently cut. That he was scared, went out the back way, threw the razor under the house, washed the blood off his hands in a bucket of water, and got some on a handkerchief. He buried the handkerchief, he said, near the place where he was working; later he voluntarily went with the officers, showed them the place, and it was unearthed.
The blood on several garments worn by defendant at the time of the death was analyzed by experts and proved to be the same type as that of deceased.
Photographs of the rooms, and the body as found, which the witness testified were accurate representations, were, over defendant's objection, permitted to be shown the jury, with the caution that they were not substantive evidence, but could be considered only as illustrating the testimony. Defendant excepted.
Dr. Norfleet, qualified as an expert, testified that deceased had two cuts upon the neck on both sides, lapping from both sides, which severed major arteries. Based upon his examination of the body and its surroundings he gave it as his opinion that deceased was lying on the floor when she received these wounds. To this defendant objected and excepted. The witness gave as his reasons that if she had been standing the severance of the major blood vessel in the neck would have caused the blood to gush or spurt out in quantities under the pressure and spray a greater area than he found to be the case, and particularly the bed and furniture immediately near, and he found no such evidence of that condition. There was blood on the floor, for quite a distance, but none on the upper part of the furniture, and none on the bed, which was right next to the body, except at a low level. A major blood vessel, however, was cut to produce the amount of blood he saw on the floor. If a person's throat was cut, and a major blood vessel severed, the blood would gush out before he could fall to the floor, and in this instance would have shown on the furniture or bedspread.
William Parker, who owns a funeral home in Tarboro and embalmed the body, after qualifying as an expert embalmer, especially as to the human circulatory system, testified that in the course of preparing the body for burial he examined the wounds inflicted upon the neck and throat. The neck was cut practically all the way from the lobe of one ear to that of the other, in two incisions, severing both jugular veins. The esophagus was cut in two, and a "nick" was made in the neckbone. To this evidence defendant excepted.
Upon the conclusion of the evidence, defendant demurred to the evidence and moved for judgment as of nonsuit, which was denied, and defendant excepted. Defendant also moved to nonsuit on the charge of first degree murder, which was refused, and defendant excepted.
At the conclusion of the evidence and before argument began the Court excused one of the jurors for cause, and substituted for him the "thirteenth" juror who had been qualified as the statute requires, and had sat with the jury throughout the trial. The prisoner was present in court but his counsel had left the court after adjournment and was not present or available. Counsel was permitted to file objection and exception.
The verdict was murder in the first degree. Defendant moved to set aside the verdict for errors committed on the trial, which was denied, and defendant excepted. From the ensuing sentence of death, defendant, having objected and excepted, appealed, assigning errors.
Harry McMullan, Atty. Gen., and T.W. Burton, Hughes J. Rhodes, and Ralph M. Moody, Asst. Attys. Gen., for th4e State.
Cooley & May, of Nashville, for defendant app...
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