Wilson v. State

• Decision Date: 23 November 1954
• Citation: 109 A.2d 381,49 Del. 37,10 Terry 37
• Court: United States State Supreme Court of Delaware
• Parties: , 49 Del. 37 James Elbert WILSON, Appellant, v. The STATE of Delaware, Appellee.

Page 381

109 A.2d 381

10 Terry 37, 49 Del. 37

James Elbert WILSON, Appellant, v. The STATE of Delaware, Appellee.

Supreme Court of Delaware.

Nov. 23, 1954.

Louis L. Redding, Wilmington, for appellant.

Stephen E. Hamilton, Jr., Deputy Atty. Gen. (H. Albert Young, Atty. Gen., Edmund N. Carpenter, II, Deputy Atty. Gen., on the brief), for the State.

SOUTHERLAND, C. J., and WOLCOTT and BRAMHALL, JJ., sitting.

SOUTHERLAND, Chief Justice.

Wilson, the defendant below, was tried, convincted and sentenced to death for the rape of Helen Baker, a girl nineteen years of age. His appeal assigns error (1) in receiving in evidence statements made by him to police officers, and (2) in the charge to the jury.

The evidence adduced by the State relating to the commission of the crime was uncontradicted by any testimony on defendant's behalf. A summary follows:

Helen Baker lived with her father and younger sister in an apartment at 429 East 4th Street in the City of Wilmington. The apartment consisted of living room, kitchen and shed on the ground floor, and two bedrooms and a bath on the second floor. On the evening of February 19, 1953, Helen, her sister Betty, aged fifteen, and a friend of Betty's, Beverly Bryson, aged seventeen, watched a television program in the living room until about eleven o'clock. The father, employed on a night shift, left the apartment shortly before eleven to go to work.

At about eleven o'clock Betty and her friend went upstairs to bed in the bedroom over the kitchen. They had been up late the night before--'till morning'--and were tired. Helen undressed and went to bed on the living room sofa. She was wearing a pajama top and a pair of pants. The only bed linen was a chenille bedspread, under which she slept.

Some time in the early morning (probably around two o'clock), Wilson entered the apartment, probably through the unlocked kitchen door, awoke the girl, and announced his intention to have sexual intercourse with her. She screamed, cried, and resisted fiercely. Wilson stifled her cries by holding his hand over her mouth and nose and by choking her, and finally by wrapping the bedspread around her head. In the struggle she was thrown to the floor, and was overpowered and ravished. When the act was over and she was free from her assailant, she got to her feet and turned on the light in the living room, and had a look at him. Wilson picked up his hat and went into the kitchen. She followed, turned on the kitchen light, and had another look at him as he turned around before going out by the back door.

Crying and moaning, she went upstairs to the bathroom. The other two girls were awakened by her cries and went into the bathroom. Betty asked her what had happened. Helen replied that a colored man had got into the house and had raped her. The police were notified (2:26 a. m.) and almost immediately arrived at the apartment. Helen was sent to the Delaware Hospital, where she was examined and treated by the Police Surgeon.

The testimony of the other two girls, of the police officers who saw her upon their arrival, and of the examining physician, as well as her own testimony, established beyond any doubt that she had been subjected to brutal violence and to a sexual assault. There were lacerations, bruises and dried bloodstains on her face, bite marks on one of her breasts, bite marks on her right arm, and some bleeding around the vaginal area caused by external irritation. Examination of a smear from the vaginal canal showed evidence of recent intercourse.

The police on arriving at the apartment found the living room in disorder. The bedspread that had been used to stifle Helen's cries was on the floor, as well as two pieces of her torn pants. All were subjected to analysis and all were shown to be bloodstained. The pajama top that she had worn was also bloodstained.

Wilson was taken into custody at noon of the same day (February 20th). The trousers and shorts that he was wearing were taken from him and examined and were shown to be bloodstained. Semen was found in the fly area of the shorts. A tan shirt and a topcoat, both bloodstained, were found in his room. Three buttons were missing from the shirt. Three buttons were found by the police on the floor of the living room where Helen had been attacked. The threads attached to them were compared under microscopic examination with the threads adhering to the shirt, and were found to correspond.

During the afternoon of February 20th Helen was taken to the police station. From an adjoining room she listened to the voices of three Negroes: Wilson, Detective Park and Detective Purnell. She identified Wilson's voice as that of her assailant. Shortly thereafter she unhestitatingly identified him in a police line-up with other Negroes. She positively identified him at the trial.

As before stated, the foregoing testimony was not contradicted by any witness. Wilson did not testify before the jury. A man with whom he shared his room testified that Wilson returned to the room 'something like' two or two-thirty in the morning. The witness noticed that 'the buttons was off his shirt' and asked him about it, but Wilson did not tell him anything. Wilson's mother testified that he was twenty-six years old, went to the fifth grade in school in West Virginia, and left school at the age of fourteen to go to work. Asked whether he had any illness or accident during boyhood, she replied: 'It was his head'. Asked what happened, she replied that he was in a car wreck and in a hospital as a result. No claim of mental illness at the time of the crime was made at the trial or is made now.

Wilson's principal contention here is that the court below committed prejudicial error in admitting into evidence a statement made by Wilson, reduced to writing, and signed by him in the presence of four detectives of the Wilmington Police Department.

I. The admissibility in evidence of Wilson's statement.

The substance of Wilson's written statement is that he left a beer garden about 11:30 or 12:00 o'clock on the night of the 19th; that he stood on the corner of Fourth and Walnut Streets about five minutes; that a white girl passed him and he accosted her and made a bargain to pay her five dollars for sexual intercourse; that they went to her house through the kitchen and into her bedroom, where they had intercourse; that she asked him for the money and he told her he didn't have it; that she then grabbed him and pulled the buttons off his shirt and he jerked away from her and ran out of the house. Later, he said, he returned to his room, where he roommate asked him what was wrong with his shirt, to which he replied (in effect) that he had been with a white girl and that she had torn the buttons off because he didn't have the five dollars to give to her.

When the Attorney General first sought to interrogate one of the detectives respecting the circumstances under which this statement was taken, Wilson's attorney asked leave to examine the witness on voir dire, and to do so in the absence of the jury, in order that the court might pass upon the admissibility of the statement. These requests were granted. Six police officers and an officer of the State Highway gave evidence on the issue, and Wilson was called on his own behalf. Upon the close of the hearing on voir dire, Wilson objected to the introduction of the statement on the ground that the evidence showed that it was obtained by coercion, after thirteen hours of questioning by police officers. After argument of counsel and consideration of authorities cited to it, the court overruled the objection and admitted the statement in evidence. This is the ruling that is first assigned as error.

Wilson's contention is that the statement, though not a confession of guilt, was an incriminating admission, because it acknowledged his presence at the scene of the crime and admitted one essential element thereof--sexual intercourse with Helen Baker. The receipt into evidence of such admissions, says defendant, must be attended by the same safeguards that surround the use of confessions of guilt; and the State must affirmatively show that the statement was voluntary. Wilson further contends that the uncontradicted evidence shows that the statement was obtained after many hours of questioning, while defendant was in the custody of the police; that the circumstances surrounding its making were inherently coercive; and that the trial court should have excluded it.

Before considering the legal questions suggested by these contentions, we examine the facts.

Wilson was taken into custody by Detectives Park and Purnell about noon on Friday, February 20th. (Wilson fixed the time as eleven o'clock, but Purnell testified positively, from a contemporary memorandum which he produced at the trial, that it was twelve o'clock noon.) Wilson was taken to the police station and asked to give an account of his whereabouts during the preceding night. He asked why he was being picked up and was told that a crime had been committed. The officers did not tell him the nature of the crime nor did they at that time charge him with any crime. He stated to the officers that he had spent the evening with some friends, and had twice visited a taproom at Fifth and Walnut Streets. (The taproom is distant two city blocks from the Baker home.) Shortly before midnight he left and walked to his home (it is about six blocks away), stood outside talking to a man a few minutes, and then went in and went to bed and stayed there the rest of the night.

After this statement was made, the officers asked him if they could look at his room and he assented. Park, Purnell and Wilson then went to Wilson's room where they found the shirt and topcoat above mentioned. After leaving Wilson's room the three of them went to a dry cleaning establishment, apparently to get a suit belonging to Wilson. They then returned to the Police Station.

Sometime thereafter, about 1:15...