Wells v. Com.

• Decision Date: 13 March 1950
• Docket Number: 3655,Nos. 3542,s. 3542
• Citation: Wells v. Com., 57 S.E.2d 898, 190 Va. 619 (1950)
• Court: Virginia Supreme Court
• Parties: EUGENE WELLS v. COMMONWEALTH OF VIRGINIA. Record

Page 898

57 S.E.2d 898

190 Va. 619

EUGENE WELLS v. COMMONWEALTH OF VIRGINIA.

Record Nos. 3542, 3655.

Supreme Court of Appeals of Virginia

March 13, 1950.

George P. Cridlin and Lloyd M. Robinette, for the plaintiff in error.

J. Lindsay Almond, Jr., Attorney General, and H. T. Williams, Jr., Special Assistant, for the Commonwealth.

JUDGE: BUCHANAN

BUCHANAN, J., delivered the opinion of the court.

Eugene Wells stabbed and killed J. B. Huff. On his trial before a jury he was convicted of murder in the first degree and sentenced to twenty years in the penitentiary. On this writ of error he contends first that the verdict was not warranted by the evidence.

Wells and Huff lived in the same neighborhood in Lee county. Wells was twenty-two years old and not in good health. Huff was a year or two younger but bigger and stronger. For some time the relations between them had not been friendly. The evidence shows rather a bullying attitude on the part of Huff toward Wells. Wells testified that about eight months before the killing Huff jumped on him and threw a wine bottle at him because he thought Wells was responsible for the refusal of the latter's sister to 'date' him.

On Sunday night, a week before the killing, Huff was in a quarrel with one Garrett. Wells was standing by taking no part. Huff turned his attention to Wells and said, 'What have you got to do with it, red shirt?' Wells replied that he had nothing to do with it, whereupon Huff cursed him, started toward him and threatened to hit him with a beer bottle.

Some two or three hours before the killing Huff was at a beer tavern drinking and was heard to say, 'Me or Eugene one is going to go down.' There is no dispute in the evidence in regard to these previous occurrences.

The killing occurred near the Keokee church around nine o'clock on Sunday night. Wells left his home about dark to go to the church, accompanied by his three younger sisters, Carson Herron, J. B. Herron and some Kelly children. When they arrived at the church the children went inside while Wells and the Herrons stopped in the church yard. A few minutes later Huff came to the church and at or about the same time two of his brothers, Ralph and Mervin, arrived. James Calvin Davidson, the only witness for the Commonwealth who undertook to relate how the killing occurred, testified that when he came to the church he saw the Huff boys and the Wells boy out under a tree. This is his account of what happened then:

'The first I knowed of it, I was standing in front of the Church house and I saw a crowd out there and the Huff boy told the Wells boy he had been talking about him and he said, 'You cannot do that,' and he hit him with his fist and the Wells boy put his hand up like he was going after a knife and the Huff boy jerked out a pocket knife and told him to draw his knife and we will cut it out. Me and a Baker boy were standing there and we told them if they were going to fight to give us their knives and get away from the Church and fight it out. The Huff boy started to give his knife to Barker and the Wells boy said he did not have a knife. They had a few more words and a Herron boy and the Wells boy turned and went up the hill.'

He further testified that when church was over, perhaps an hour later, he walked away from the church with the crowd, consisting of twenty people or more, including Huff, but he did not see Wells in the crowd or anywhere along the road. He did not see him until 'we got on top of the hill,' some quarter of a mile from the church, where he heard Huff say to Wells, 'What do you aim to do about it now?' Then he 'turned around and looked back and about that time I seen the Wells boy cut him.' When he looked back, he said, Huff was standing with his back to the witness and facing Wells. He did not see Huff doing anything with his hands; 'the best I could see Huff's hand was down by his side.' He testified that Wells stabbed Huff but he could not see the knife. He said he was about twenty feet away, he would guess, but it was not too dark and you could see about 100 feet off. He testified that Huff came to him immediately after he was cut and he did not see anything in his hand. He said that Huff was in the crowd leaving the church and the three Wells girls were in front ahead of most of the crowd.

Alethia Huff, the fourteen-year-old sister of deceased, testified that as 'we were coming from Church, me and my brothers, and J. B. and Helen Wells and Eugene were together;' that J. B. Huff gave Helen a cigarette, and about that time she saw a dagger behind Wells' back; that she then knew he was going to stab her brother so she ran to the front to get her other two brothers, and when she got back the cutting had happened. She testified that on the preceding Wednesday, as they were coming from church, Wells had his arm on her shoulder and said, 'Here is J. B.'s sister and I am going to kill J. B. and send his soul to hell and laugh while he is dying.' She did not tell her brother or anybody about this, she said, because she did not want to tell everything she knew. She admitted on cross-examination that she did not see a knife in Wells' hand on the night of the cutting, but he had his hand behind his back and something was in it; that his back was turned away from her.

Ralph Huff, brother of deceased, testified that he was ahead of Wells in the crowd; that his brother came running by him and said Eugene cut him; that he heard Helen Wells say, 'Oh, Lord, you ought not done that;' that he walked on back to Wells and asked him why he had done it and Wells said he did not cut him, that deceased ran into the knife; and then Wells ran off; that he saw a knife in Wells' hand that looked like an army knife. He said that was the first time he had seen Wells that night; that he was eight or nine feet in front of Davidson and did not hear his brother say anything to Wells.

This was all the testimony for the Commonwealth as to what happened on the night of the killing. In addition, an aunt of the deceased testified that some six months before the trouble she heard Wells say he always had despised Huff; and one Jack Smith testified that about three weeks before the killing Wells said to him that Huff and some other boys had been raising a fuss with him and he pulled out a knife from under his shirt and said he was going to settle it with that. He said it was a pointed knife, sharp on both sides, with about a seven-inch blade, something like an army bayonet. Smith said he had knocked Wells down about six months before that (he also said six weeks) over a girl he accused Wells of talking about.

Huff's wound was a cut about three inches long in the lower abdomen, made with a sharp instrument, which perforated his intestines, and as a result he died four days later.

The defendant claimed that he cut Huff in self-defense. His version was that when he and the Herron boys were in the church yard Huff called Carson Herron to him, showed him an open knife and told Herron he was going to whip Wells. He then came over to Wells and asked him why he had been lying about him. Wells said he had not and Huff then cursed him, struck him in the face with his fist and said, 'Do you think I will not cut your head off and roll it over the hill?' Wells did not resist, and Huff's brother, Mervin, standing by said, 'Leave that boy alone, he has done nothing to you.' Wells then walked over to J. B. Herron and together they left the church, 'to keep him from bothering us,' said Wells. Wells was fully corroborated as to this occurrence by the two Herron brothers. There is no contradiction of it in the Commonwealth's evidence. In fact, Davidson, main Commonwealth's witness, testified to...