Tanner v. State, 38571
| Decision Date | 05 January 1953 |
| Docket Number | No. 38571,38571 |
| Citation | 216 Miss. 150,61 So.2d 781 |
| Parties | TANNER v. STATE. |
| Court | Mississippi Supreme Court |
Pershing B. Sullivan, Laurel, for appellant.
J. P. Coleman, Atty. Gen., by Geo. H. Ethridge, Asst. Atty. Gen., for appellee.
Rudolph Tanner was indicted, tried and convicted in the circuit court of Smith County on a charge of assault and battery with intent to kill and murder one Wesley Dickerson, and was sentenced by the court to imprisonment in the state penitentiary for a term of five years. From that judgment he prosecutes this appeal.
Dickerson testified that he was in his yard about 4:00 o'clock in the afternoon cutting firewood, when he was shot in the back with a bullet from a twenty-two rifle. The bullet entered the upper left side of the back, passed through the body and came to rest in the lower part of the breastbone. Dickerson's wife and his two daughters, Murdell and Dorothy Lou, were in the yard when the shooting occurred. Dickerson called to them to 'get in the house' immediately and then ran into the house himself. According to the testimony of Dickerson and his wife, Dickerson was suffering intense pain, and a few minutes after the shooting his daughter, Murdell, who was the wife of the appellant and who was separated from him at the time of the shooting, left the house to call for help and to notify the sheriff, and two shots were fired over her head while she was in the yard. Mrs. Dickerson then ran out of the house with an automatic pistol and fired one shot toward the clump of woods from which the other shots seemed to have come. She testified that as she shot her pistol the appellant jumped up with his rifle and ran, and as she advanced toward the edge of the porch he shot her in the leg. Dickerson then fired four shots from the window. According to the testimony of Dickerson and his wife, thirty or thirty-five minutes elapsed between the time that Dickerson was shot at the woodpile and the time that his wife was shot in the leg.
Dr. R. B. Boykin testified that he examined Dickerson at his home soon after the shooting; and that he found that the bullet had entered Dickerson's body about half way between the backbone and the right side of the left arm, and had passed through the lower part of the liver. Dickerson was treated at a local hospital, and was then carried to the Veterans' Hospital at Jackson, where he remained about two weeks. Dickerson testified that the defendant had shot four times in all, one time at him, two times at Dickerson's daughter, Murdell, and one time at Dickerson's wife.
W. L. Crumpton, the sheriff, testified that he was notified of the shooting soon after the shooting had occurred, and that he sent two of his deputies, Hooker Martin and Wilson Dickerson, a distant relative of Wesley Dickerson, to make an investigation. The defendant was arrested and placed in jail, and the morning after the arrest the sheriff called the district attorney on the telephone and requested him to come to Raleigh to assist in the investigation. The sheriff testified that after the district attorney arrived the defendant was brought from the jail to the courthouse and was questioned by the officers. The defendant told the officers that he did not know that Wesley Dickerson had been shot until he saw the ambulance going toward his home. The district attorney asked the defendant why that would cause him to think that Mr. Dickerson had been shot. The defendant hung his head, and the district attorney then asked him whether he wanted to tell the officers how it happened; and the defendant said 'yes.' The defendant then give a detailed account of the shooting.
The defendant's attorney objected to the testimony relating to the alleged confession on the ground that the alleged confession had not been made freely and voluntarily and on the ground that the defendant had not been advised that his statement might be used against him. When the objection was interposed, the court ordered the jury to retire from the courtroom, and the court then conducted a preliminary inquiry for the purpose of determining whether the statement made by the defendant to the officers had been made freely and voluntarily. The defendant's attorney subjected the sheriff to a vigorous cross-examination as to the voluntary nature of the alleged confession and the defendant testified himself on that issue and gave his own version of the details of the conversation which he had had with the officers before making the alleged confession. The defendant made no claim that he had been threatened or mistreated by the officers in any manner, or that any promises had been made to him to induce him to make the statements that he had made to the officers; and after a vigorous cross-examination by the district attorney the defendant finally admitted that the only thing that the district attorney had said to him about making a statement was that it would be better for him to tell how it happened--'tell the truth about it.'
The court found that the statements made by the defendant to the officers had been made freely and voluntarily, and the court overruled the defendant's objection to the admission of the testimony. The jury was then returned to the courtroom, and the sheriff related to the jury the statements which the defendant had made to the officers the morning after the shooting. The sheriff testified that the defendant told the officers that on the day of the shooting he procured a rifle and sixteen cartridges and went through the woods to Dickerson's house about 8:30 or 9:00 o'clock; that he remained there and watched the house until late in the afternoon; that he had plenty of chances to shoot, but that he was trying to get two together; that he shot Wesley Dickerson with the first shot; that he was standing behind some brushes, where Mr. Dickerson could not see him, when he fired the shot; and that Mr. Dickerson was stooped down cutting wood at the time he fired the shot. The sheriff stated that the district attorney asked the defendant whether he gave Dickerson any...
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...other crime is admissible if it sheds light upon the motive for the commission of the crime charged in the indictment. Tanner v. State, 216 Miss. 150, 61 So.2d 781 (1953). Proof that defendant is guilty of another crime is admissible when that fact (1) tends to show that the deceased office......
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...the whole must be heard in order to interpret its general parts, then evidence of other crimes is admissible. Tanner v. State, 216 Miss. 150, 157, 61 So.2d 781, 784 (1953). The trial judge committed no error because the other crimes mentioned were part of the res gestae of the crime in the ......
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