Tillman v. State

• Decision Date: 30 March 1914
• Docket Number: 228
• Citation: 166 S.W. 582,112 Ark. 236
• Parties: TILLMAN v. STATE
• Court: Arkansas Supreme Court

166 S.W. 582

112 Ark. 236

TILLMAN v. STATE

No. 228

Supreme Court of Arkansas

March 30, 1914

Appeal from Logan Circuit Court, Southern District; Jeptha H. Evans Judge; affirmed.

Judgment affirmed.

W. E Atkinson and Robert J. White, for appellant.

1. The photographs were not admissible in evidence. 91 Ark. 179; 69 N.E. 216; 9 Enc. of Ev. 780.

2. The exclusion of the testimony as to the lack of virtue of deceased was erroneous and prejudicial. Any testimony tending to show that some other person may have committed the crime is admissible. 100 Ark. 301; 140 S.W. 13; Wharton on Homicide (2 ed.), § 602; 21 A. & E. Enc. 229; 58 S.W. 1018; 48 Id. 980.

3. The evidence tending to show Bolen's connection with deceased and his motive for the crime were admissible. 113 S.W. 897; 6 Enc of Ev. 751; 83 Tenn. 604; 39 La.Ann. 921; 77 Ky. 106; 2 Wash. 381; 7 P. 872.

4. There were errors in the instructions. They were inconsistent. The court should not single out and stress any particular fact. 59 S.W. 1096; 77 Ark. 418.

Wm. L Moose, Attorney General, and. Jno. P. Streepey, Assistant, for appellee.

1. The evidence is conflicting but is of such substantial nature as to support the verdict. 109 Ark. 130; Ib. 199.

2. The photographs were properly admitted. 94 Ark. 65.

3. Testimony as to chastity in 1910 was properly excluded. Admissions of guilt by a third party are hearsay. 2 So. 764; 33 Id. 893; 11 Id. 814-825; 32 Ark. 539-549; 100 Id. 301; 14 Cent. Dig., Cr. Law, § 981.

4. There is no error in the instructions. The exceptions are en masse and general. 109 Ark. 138; 94 Ark. 68.

5. The remarks of the prosecuting attorney were not prejudicial. 109 Ark. 138. The court properly admonished the jury as to these remarks.

OPINION

MCCULLOCH, C. J.

The defendant, Arthur Tillman, appeals from a judgment of conviction for the crime of murder in the first degree, alleged to have been committed on March 10, 1913, by killing Amanda Stephens, a young woman about nineteen years of age.

Defendant and deceased were reared together in the same community in Delaware Township, Logan County, Arkansas. It was a thickly settled community around a postoffice or country village called Delaware, or Delaware Hall. They had known each other from childhood and were on intimate terms up to the time of the disappearance and death of deceased. The girl resided with her parents on a public road a mile or so northeast of the store and postoffice. Defendant was twenty-two years old at the time of the death of the girl, and resided with his parents about a mile southwest of the postoffice. Amanda Stephens disappeared from the home of her parents and from the community on Monday, March 10, 1913, and was last seen during the afternoon of that day at the house of a neighbor, where she made some statements containing hints or suggestions that she was going to leave the community. Her body was found in an old well on a small farm adjoining that of defendant's parents. There was a bullet hole in her head, entering in front and on top of the head, and ranging downward toward the base of the brain; and there were a few minor scratches on her body, not indicating any violence but rather wounds inflicted on the body in placing it in the well. A heavy rock was attached to her neck by a piece of telephone wire, and the rock curbing around the well was thrown into the well over her body, completely covering it and holding it down to the bottom of the well. The well was covered over with plank, scantlings and sticks, which were held down by rocks. The well was near an old abandoned house and was not a great ways from the home of defendant's parents. It was in view from another house on the same farm, which was unoccupied on the day or night the murder is alleged to have been committed, but was occupied by a man and his wife when the body was found.

There is no direct evidence as to the identity of the girl's murderer, but the State relies upon many circumstances tending to connect defendant with it.

The girl was unmarried, and a post mortem examination disclosed the fact that she was about four or five months advanced in pregnancy. There is abundant testimony that defendant had been keeping company with her and had been frequently having sexual intercourse with her for several months before her death. This the defendant did not deny, but, on the contrary, admitted it from the witness stand. There was a pine thicket about a mile north of the postoffice, commonly designated in the neighborhood as the "Pines," and deceased and defendant resorted to that place for sexual intercourse. They were seen together there during the forenoon of the day that deceased disappeared. On Sunday, the day before the killing, defendant went to a physician in the neighborhood, and, according to evidence adduced by the prosecution, stated to the physician that deceased was pregnant as result of their intercourse, and asked the physician to furnish him with some kind of a medicine or remedy that would destroy the unborn child. To this request the physician replied that he had nothing of the sort.

On Monday morning (March 10) defendant mailed a letter at the Delaware postoffice addressed to deceased, asking her to meet him once more, and stating that he had decided to marry her if she wanted him to do so, and requested her to meet him at the "old place" on the following Thursday, saying "we will fix this up," and adding, at the conclusion of the letter, that it would only take about five minutes for the meeting. Defendant admitted in his testimony that he mailed the letter and explained that it was written in reply to a letter he had received the day before from deceased demanding that he should marry her. This letter never reached deceased, but was found in the mail box Monday afternoon after she had left home for the last time. It is shown that shortly after defendant mailed the letter, deceased passed along the road, going up in the direction of the pine thicket already mentioned, and that defendant followed her, and that they went off together in the direction of the thicket. Something less than an hour later he returned down the road, and, being accosted by an acquaintance, stated that he had been to the thicket with deceased for the purpose of having intercourse with her. He asked whether the mail carrier had come along, and upon seeing the carrier drive up about that time, he started off in a trot toward the postoffice. When he reached there he asked the postmaster to give him the letter which he had mailed that morning, but the postmaster declined to do so on the ground that the mail had already been made up ready for the carrier. Defendant was attending the school at that place, and after leaving the postoffice returned to the schoolhouse.

Late that afternoon, somewhere near sundown, and after the store was closed, defendant left his home and walked up toward a store about half a mile north of his father's residence, and he testified that he went there for the purpose of buying a pencil tablet to use that night in preparation of his lessons. When he got up near the store, according to his statement, he found it was closed, and turned and went back home. Witnesses for the State testified that, in going to the store he traveled an unaccustomed route, and the storekeeper testified that he was near the store at the time in readiness to unlock it to wait on any customer who might apply, and that defendant well knew his habits in that respect. The telephone wire was cut not a great distance from the store and the route pursued by defendant in going up to the store, and the proof shows that this was done late in the afternoon, as the telephone was found about that time to be out of commission. Some of the telephone wire was missing, and the wire corresponded precisely with that with which the rock was attached to deceased's body. In fact, it seems to be treated in the case as an undisputed fact that the wire used in attaching the rock to the body was that which had been taken from the telephone line.

The wound inflicted in deceased's head was by a shot from a 22-caliber pistol or rifle, and it is shown that there was a rifle of that caliber at defendant's home, owned by some of the members of his family.

The next day after the disappearance of deceased, or possibly the day thereafter, her father instituted inquiry, having in the meantime found and read the letter which defendant had written to her.

Defendant left the community on Wednesday and went over to Knoxville, a small town on the railroad in the adjoining county, where he had an uncle residing, and perhaps other relatives.

On Wednesday night deceased's father went before a justice of the peace and swore out a warrant against defendant, charging him with the crime of seduction. The officer arrested him at Knoxville at night, but he made his escape from the officer, the evidence tending to show that the officers at that time did not know or realize that a murder had probably been committed, and had no information of it, and were not unwilling for the defendant to make his escape and thus evade the charge of seduction made against him. His illicit relations with deceased had become well known in the community.

Defendant at the time he was arrested, stated that he would die before he would be taken back to Logan County. He remained at Knoxville several days, not altogether in seclusion, the proof tending to show that he remained most of the time at the house of his relatives, but visited around to some extent. During this time he visited several other young ladies of his acquaintance. On Sunday, March 16, he went back to Logan County to the home of his father, going a circuitous route, avoiding the public roads...