Teague v. State
| Decision Date | 02 March 1944 |
| Docket Number | 6 Div. 166. |
| Citation | 245 Ala. 339,16 So.2d 877 |
| Parties | TEAGUE v. STATE. |
| Court | Alabama Supreme Court |
W L. Longshore and Chas. B. Aycock, both of Birmingham, for appellant.
Wm N. McQueen, Acting Atty. Gen., and John O. Harris, Asst Atty. Gen., for the State.
The appellant, Wade Teague, alias "Shorty" Teague, was indicted, tried and convicted in the Circuit Court of Jefferson County, Alabama, for the offense of murder in the first degree, and his punishment fixed at death.
The testimony is without dispute that the deceased, Hobert Eli Blevins, accompanied by a negro man, Albert Hudson, went to the house of appellant, located at 2126 Seventh Alley, North Birmingham, Alabama, about eight:thirty or nine o'clock on the night of February 13, 1943. Early of the morning of February 14, 1943, Blevins was found unconscious in a vacant lot near by, and to the rear of the house occupied by appellant. He died in the afternoon of that day without regaining consciousness. The medical testimony was to the effect that death resulted from a blow on the head inflicted with some blunt instrument. When Blevins was found there was blood on the back of his head, blood on the ground near where he was found, and on his coat sleeve. One pants pocket was turned inside out: his inside coat pocket was torn and his pocketbook or wallet and an unopened pocketknife were on the ground near him. The pocketbook was open and empty.
One Queenie Gratton rented a room from appellant in the house occupied by him, and which room she shared with one Alonzo Bowyers, apparently without benefit of clergy. When deceased and Hudson arrived at the house of appellant on the night of the 13th, appellant, Queenie Gratton, Alonzo Bowyers and Robert Shepherd were there; others also came in and went out while deceased was there. Deceased bought several drinks of whisky from appellant, giving one to Hudson, one to Queenie Gratton, and drinking the others himself.
Deceased left the house of appellant sometime about eleven:thirty o'clock, and the manner of his departure, and the circumstances surrounding it, present the principal disputed questions of fact.
Witnesses for the State testified that as deceased was leaving the house, appellant, who was on the front porch, struck deceased a blow on the head with a claw hammer, and knocked him from the porch onto the ground: that shortly thereafter appellant helped deceased, or carried him, towards the vacant lot where he was later found. That appellant was gone only a few minutes and came back and went to bed: that about two o'clock appellant got out of bed, left the house for several minutes, then returned and went back to bed.
Defendant's testimony was to the effect that as deceased was leaving the house, Queenie Gratton pushed or shoved him through the door and off the front porch, and that deceased in falling from the porch struck his head against a telephone pole in the yard; that he, appellant, and Bowyers assisted deceased to the vacant lot; that deceased asked to be allowed to sit down, and that they left deceased sitting on the ground. Appellant denied that he struck deceased, and that he took any money from him.
Mrs. Harris, a sister of deceased, testified that she saw deceased on the afternoon of February 13, 1943; that he gave her $25, and put back in his bill fold about $15.
Mrs. Harris was the first witness for the State. After completing her testimony, both direct and cross, she was allowed, over the objections of appellant's counsel to remain in the court-room during the remainder of the trial. She was not recalled to the witness stand. The exclusion of all witnesses, except the one under examination, from the court-room during the trial is not a matter of right, but is one within the sound discretion of the trial judge. Ryan v. Couch, 66 Ala. 244; McGuff v. State, 88 Ala. 147, 7 So. 35, 16 Am.St.Rep. 25; McClellan v. State, 117 Ala. 140, 23 So. 653; New York Life Ins. Co. v. McLean, 218 Ala. 401, 118 So. 753. There was no abuse of discretion in permitting Mrs. Harris to remain in the court-room.
On the theory there was no evidence to support it, appellant reserved an exception to the court's oral charge on the question of a conspiracy; and, specifically, to the following part thereof, "every homicide committed in the perpetration of or attempt to perpetrate any robbery is murder in the first degree."
In the case of Jones v. State, 174 Ala. 53, 57 So. 31,...
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Carpenter v. State
...to his testimony after the rule had been invoked caused reversible error. We disagree. Two cases cited by appellant, Teague v. State, 245 Ala. 339, 16 So.2d 877 (1944) and Raymond v. Pointer, 222 Ala. 518, 133 So. 260 (1931), stand for the proposition that it is within the discretion of the......
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Stokley v. State
...testimony in the case. Morris v. State, 146 Ala. 66, 41 So. 274, and cases cited; Jones v. State, 174 Ala. 53, 57 So. 31; Teague v. State, 245 Ala. 339, 16 So.2d 877. When two or more persons enter upon an unlawful purpose, with a common intent to aid and encourage each other in anything wi......
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Hodges v. State
...power to exclude and separate witnesses is entirely a matter of discretion with the trial court." The Comments cite Teague v. State, 245 Ala. 339, 16 So.2d 877 (1944); and Beddow v. State, 39 Ala.App. 29, 96 So.2d 175 (1956), cert. denied, 266 Ala. 694, 96 So.2d 178 (1957), cert. denied, 35......
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Jackson v. State
...of the rule, the trial court's decision as to his testifying or not is not open to review. Wilson v. State, 52 Ala. 299; Teague v. State, 245 Ala. 339, 16 So.2d 877. Moreover, the efficacy of sequestration--which can only occur during the trial--is probably overrated. The law has moved from......