Taylor v. State
| Decision Date | 28 July 1939 |
| Citation | 139 Fla. 542,190 So. 691 |
| Parties | TAYLOR v. STATE. |
| Court | Florida Supreme Court |
Error to Circuit Court, Brevard County; M. B. Smith, Judge.
Tom Taylor was convicted of murder in the second degree, and he brings error.
Affirmed.
Butt & Akridge, of Cocoa, for plaintiff in error.
George Couper Gibbs, Atty. Gen., and Thomas J. Ellis, Asst. Atty Gen., for the State.
The plaintiff in error, Tom Taylor, was on the 12th day of October, 1938, indicted by a grand jury of Brevard County Florida, for the murder of one James Wilson in said County on the 1st day of June, 1938. He was arraigned on said indictment and entered a plea of not guilty, and placed upon trial and was by a jury of Brevard County convicted of murder in the second degree and by the trial court sentenced to the State Penitentiary at hard labor for a period of twenty years. From this judgment of conviction he has perfected his appeal to this Court, with a number of assignments of error which are duly presented and argued in the brief by his counsel in this Court under six separate questions.
The first question presented involves assignments 2, 3, 4 and 5 and are each predicated on the order of the lower court in overruling and denying plaintiff in error's motion for a new trial. The brief of counsel here on this question discusses the sufficiency of the evidence to sustain the verdict as found by the jury.
The evidence shows that the defendant and the deceased lived in Paul Thompson's quarters located in one of the outlying districts of and near the Town of Cocoa. The defendant came to Florida about thirty years ago from the State of South Carolina, and had worked continuously with the said Paul Thompson in his saw mill during this time, and at the time of the tragedy the defendant was 77 years of age. He was night watchman at the saw mill located near the quarters and made trips at regular intervals from his home to the saw mill, and in so doing, passed the house in which the deceased lived and was later killed. The defendant collected the weekly rents on the eight houses making up the Thompson quarters and maintained order but was not an officer of the law, but his authority so to do came from the owner of the quarters. The eight houses were occupied by white and colored people. The defendant and deceased are darkies.
Mahaley Wilson, wife of the deceased, was an eyewitness to the tragedy. She testified that the defendant came to their home about 8:00 or 9:00 o'clock P. M. to collect the rent on the house in which they were living. The deceased did not have the money with which to pay it and a quarrel or dispute arose in which the deceased was shot through the heart in his own home by the defendant and died within a few minutes. The defendant admitted the shooting but contended that he shot the deceased in self defense and only to save his own life. The defendant's version of the difficulty is strongly corroborated by the testimony of Wallace Harris and wife Mary Harris, and Albert Smith, who lived in the houses of the quarters and in close proximity to where the shooting occurred.
The evidence shows that shortly after the shooting officers and others went to the scene of the homicide, and there is a sharp conflict or dispute in the testimony of the witnesses for the State and the group for the defendant. Some of the witnesses for the defendant testified the deceased had an ax at the time of the shooting, but the officers and State witnesses examined the house of the deceased and failed to find an ax. There was evidence that the deceased attacked the defendant with a heavy chair and the defendant shot the deceased to protect his own life. Other witnesses testified that objects appeared between where the witnesses were located and where the shooting occurred which obstructed the vision of the witnesses giving important testimony in behalf of the defendant. The deceased weighed about 190 or 200 pounds and was about 35 years of age, while the defendant was around 77 years of age and weighed considerably less than the deceased. There were conflicts or disputes as to whether or not Mahaley Wilson was drunk or sober at the time of the shooting. The defendant's excuse for being at the deceased's home was to quell a fuss or fight between the deceased and his wife. It is not necessary to give other details of the testimony offered in the lower court.
Counsel for plaintiff in error contend that the evidence adduced was not sufficient to sustain the verdict of the jury, but that it is manifestly against the weight of the evidence and preponderates in favor of the defendant. The cases of Bexley v,. State, 59 Fla. 6, 51 So. 278, and Stanley v. Powers, 125 Fla. 322, 169 So. 861, are cited and have been duly considered by this Court.
Our construction of the testimony is that there is substantial evidence in the record to sustain the verdict as found by the jury. It is true that sharp conflicts and disputes appear, but these conflicts and disputes are questions of fact to be settled by the jury under appropriate instructions. If the jury had given full credence to the testimony offered and relied upon by the defendant, then a verdict of not guilty would have been rendered, but the jury in weighing and considering the testimony, which it had a right to do, refused or declined to give the weight and credit to the testimony of the defendant as desired by him and his counsel, as shown by the verdict so rendered, as the indictment charged murder in the first degree and the verdict was for murder in the second degree.
The rule controlling an appellate court in considering the sufficiency of the evidence to support a verdict is not what it may think the jury ought to have done, or what such court may think it would have done had it been sitting as a jury in the case, but the rule is whether as reasonable men the jury could have found from the evidence such a verdict. If the jury as reasonable men could have found such a verdict based upon the evidence, then the ruling of the trial court in denying the motion for a new trial should not be disturbed.
If the record discloses evidence from which all the essential elements of a crime may legally have been found and upon the examination by this Court of the evidence it does not appear that the jury considering the evidence was influenced by considerations other than the evidence, the order of the trial court refusing to grant a new trial on account of the insufficiency of the evidence, or because the verdict is contrary to the evidence, will not be disturbed. This Court has no authority at law to substitute its conclusions for that of the jury in passing upon conflicts or disputes in the evidence. See Pickeron v. State, 94 Fla. 268, 113 So. 707; Bullard v. State, 95 Fla. 997, 117 So. 381.
Question two presented by counsel for plaintiff in error is predicated on questions propounded to witnesses during the progress of the trial and are the basis of assignment of error, number 13 and grounds 8 and 9 of the motion for a new trial. The trial court sustained objections to the following questions propounded to defendant's witness W. V. Maxwell, viz:
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