Sutherland v. State, 6 Div. 58.

• Decision Date: 12 January 1932
• Docket Number: 6 Div. 58.
• Citation: 24 Ala.App. 573,139 So. 110
• Parties: SUTHERLAND v. STATE.
• Court: Alabama Court of Appeals

139 So. 110

24 Ala.App. 573

SUTHERLAND v. STATE.

6 Div. 58.

Court of Appeals of Alabama

January 12, 1932

Appeal from Circuit Court, Tuscaloosa County; Henry B. Foster Judge.

Johnny Sutherland was convicted of murder in the second degree, and he appeals.

Reversed and remanded.

Gordon Davis, of Tuscaloosa, for appellant.

Thos. E. Knight, Jr., Atty. Gen., and Jas. L Screws, Asst. Atty. Gen., for the State.

SAMFORD J.

The defendant, Tom Burchfield, Burt Dunn, and Ben Roberts, the deceased, were at a fishing camp on the Warrior river in January, 1931. They all spent the night together, and the next morning Burchfield and Dunn went off hunting, leaving Roberts and defendant at camp with the understanding that they too were going to hunt. When Burchfield and Dunn returned to camp about 11 o'clock, they found no one there, but in a short time defendant came up with Roberts' gun in his hand. When asked where Roberts was defendant replied he didn't know, and then: "The defendant raised up and looked down the river and says, come on I will show him to you." About thirty-eight feet from the house they found the body of Roberts, dead, with a gunshot in his body. The ground around the body was "All tramped up." Burchfield testified that defendant admitted killing Roberts and this the defendant denied. On finding the body defendant went to Lock 16 and called an officer, he then went and got his father, and they both went back to the camp where the officer was, and aided the officer in disposing of the body and handling it. While Burchfield and Dunn both remained in the camp during the investigation being made by Sheriff McKinley neither of them aided in handling the body. Both, however, told the sheriff that defendant had admitted shooting Roberts. In making the investigation the sheriff found a spot of blood on the coat sleeve of defendant and some blood at the place where the body of Roberts lay. He took the bloody sand, put it in a can, and sent it with the coat to the State Laboratory at Montgomery for testing. On the trial Miss Mayfield, an attaché of the State Laboratory, without qualifying as an expert, testified that the spot on the coat and the blood in the can was human blood.

If objection had been made to the testimony of Miss Mayfield, her evidence would have been excluded. She was not qualified as an expert, without which she would not be allowed to give her opinion upon the question of whether the blood was human or not. Clemons v. State, 167 Ala. 20, 52 So. 467.

Waiving for the time being the insistence of appellant's counsel that the coat was not properly identified as having been worn by defendant at the time of the homicide and the blood as having been that of the dead man, these two articles-the coat with the blood spot and the can of blood-before such objects may be legally admitted in evidence it must be made to appear that they have some tendency to prove or disprove some disputed or material issue, to illustrate or elucidate some other relevant fact or evidence, to corroborate or disprove some other evidence offered or to be offered. They must have some tendency to shed light upon some material inquiry. It is the duty of the...