Wooldridge v. State, 47200
| Decision Date | 05 March 1973 |
| Docket Number | No. 47200,47200 |
| Parties | Thomas Lee WOOLDRIDGE v. STATE of Mississippi. |
| Court | Mississippi Supreme Court |
Floyd Eades Hogue, Gerald H. Jacks, Cleveland, for appellant.
A. F. Summer, Atty. Gen. by T. E. Childs, Jr., Sp. Asst. Atty. Gen., Jackson, for appellee.
Appellant Wooldridge was indicted, tried and convicted in the Circuit Court of Bolivar County, Mississippi, for the crime of burglary. From a sentence of seven years in the State Penitentiary he appeals to this Court. We reverse.
During the trial when the state rested, Wooldridge moved for a directed verdict which motion was overruled. When both sides rested he asked for a peremptory instruction of not guilty, which was refused. In his motion for a new trial, he assigned as error the failure of the trial court to sustain his motion for a directed verdict. The motion for a new trial also asserted that the verdict of the jury was against the overwhelming weight of evidence. The sufficiency of the evidence is the only serious question involved in this case.
The facts are as follows. At about two o'clock a.m. on June 10, 1971, Henry McCaslin, President of the First National Bank of Rosedale, by means of telephonic 'burglar alarm' system, received indication that the branch bank situated in Beulah, Mississippi was being burglarized. Upon arrival at the bank he found that the lock on the front door had been knocked off and the burglar alarm wire had been cut. Law officers were alerted.
The sheriff of the county saw a black and red Ford automobile parked in front of a grocery store about a mile from Pace. Two men were there; one of them was standing outside the car and this individual was later by the sheriff identified as Wooldridge. The sheriff's view of Wooldridge at the store was at a time when the sheriff was driving his car at night as the subject was standing in front of the store in a lighted area. After the burglary Patrolman Richardson, having been advised to watch for any suspicious cars, saw two men driving through Cleveland, several miles away from Beulah, in a red and black Ford with a flat tire. He observed the tag number of the car and wrote down a description of the two men in the car. At approximately 1:15 a.m. (before the burglary occurred about 2:00 p.m.) George Scott, a resident of Beulah, noticed a strange gold colored Oldsmobile with a black hood parked near the bank. He later showed the FBI where it was parked and he also identified the car at the sheriff's office after it was subsequently impounded. It turned out to be Wooldridge's car.
The FBI which had a 'flyer' on Wooldridge and his companions entered the investigation. FBI agents were notified that the State Highway Patrol had a gold colored Oldsmobile under surveillance at the Holiday Inn in Grenada, Mississippi. At approximately 9:40 a.m. on the day in question, Wooldridge and a female companion were arrested in the Oldsmobile as they left Holiday Inn....
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Murphy v. State
...excluding every other reasonable hypothesis other than that of guilt. We have discussed this principle in prior cases. In Wooldridge v. State, 274 So.2d 131 (Miss.1973), for example, we reversed the defendant's burglary conviction. The facts of that case indicate that a burglar alarm "sound......
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...trial. Id. Shepherd then reiterated that "Courts cannot permit a conviction to stand based merely upon suspicion, Wooldridge v. State , 274 So.2d 131 (Miss. 1973)." Shepherd , 403 So.2d at 1288.¶ 21. Corbin reversed and rendered a burglary conviction, where the defendant was alleged to have......