State v. Todd

• Decision Date: 02 December 1942
• Docket Number: 578.
• Citation: 23 S.E.2d 47,222 N.C. 346
• Parties: STATE v. TODD.
• Court: North Carolina Supreme Court

23 S.E.2d 47

222 N.C. 346

STATE v. TODD.

No. 578.

Supreme Court of North Carolina

December 2, 1942

Harry McMullan, Atty. Gen., and George B. Patton and Hughes J Rhodes, Asst. Attys. Gen., for the State.

Lyon & Lyon, of Whiteville, for defendant.

DEVIN Justice.

The defendant assigns error in the denial by the court below of his motion for judgment as of nonsuit. He contends that the evidence offered by the State tended to exculpate rather than incriminate him, and was insufficient to warrant submission of the case to the jury or to support the verdict and judgment.

The only evidence offered by the State which in any way connected this defendant with the crime charged in the bill of indictment was the defendant's own statement to the officers. There was no other evidence. The statements or confessions of the other defendants who were tried at the same time were not competent against this defendant, and properly were excluded from the consideration of the jury as to him. While in his statement this defendant admits he drove the automobile to the scene of the homicide, and that the two who perpetrated the crime got out of the automobile, entered the filling station of the deceased and shot him to death the entire statement tends to relieve him from the imputation of guilty knowledge of their purpose, and fails to afford any substantial evidence that he participated in or aided and abetted in the perpetration of the robbery or murder. His statement is to the effect that by direction of Bonner he drove the automobile by the filling station of the deceased because Bonner said he knew some girls who used to work there, and was later told to stop for the purpose of getting some cigarettes; that shortly after Bonner and Fowler had entered the filling station he heard pistol shots, and the two ran out, got in the car, and, with threats of shooting him, ordered him to drive away. While the State by offering this statement was not precluded from showing that the facts were different, no such evidence was offered, and the State's case was made to rest entirely on the statement of the defendant, which the State presented as worthy of belief. State v. Freeman, 213 N.C. 378, 196 S.E. 308; State v. Edwards, 211 N.C. 555, 191 S.E. 1; Smith v. Atlantic & C. Air Line R. Co., 147 N.C. 603, 61 S.E. 575; State v. Mace, 118 N.C. 1244, 24 S.E. 798.

Upon a motion for judgment of nonsuit the evidence is to be considered in the light most favorable for the State, but evidence which merely suggests the possibility of guilt or which raises only a conjecture is insufficient to require submission to the jury. State v. Shelnutt, 217 N.C 274, 7 S.E.2d 561; State v. Madden, 212 N.C. 56, 192 S.E. 859; State v. Montague, 195 N.C. 20, 141 S.E. 285; State v....