Wright v. State
| Decision Date | 31 March 1966 |
| Docket Number | 7 Div. 696 |
| Parties | James William WRIGHT v. STATE. |
| Court | Alabama Supreme Court |
Huel M. Love, Talladega, for appellant.
Richmond M. Flowers, Atty. Gen., and W. Mark Anderson, III, Asst. Atty. Gen., for the State.
Under an indictment charging murder in the first degree, this appellant's trial resulted in a verdict of murder in the second degree and his punishment was fixed at confinement in the penitentiary for thirty years.
The victim of the homicide was the appellant's wife.
The evidence introduced by the state in the trial below tends to show that the appellant and his late wife had been married about two and a half years. At the time of the killing they were living in a cottage at Camp Mac in Talladega County.
On Thanksgiving Eve 1965, the appellant and his wife had invited Mr. and Mrs. Hobart Miller to spend that night and Thanksgiving day with them, the appellant and Mr. Miller having planned a hunting trip the next day.
The Millers arrived bringing with them a turkey which Mrs. Miller had already cooked. The appellant had apparently imbibed freely of vodka, and Mr. Miller of whiskey after the Miller's arrival. The two women had consumed some beer, though the deceased had drunk only one can of beer, or a part thereof.
During the evening the two couples were playing cards and Mrs. Wright left the game and went into an adjoining room. The appellant followed the deceased into the room and attempted to persuade her to return to the game but she refused. The Millers concluded that they should leave. The appellant walked to the Miller car with them, and upon his return to the house announced to his wife that he was going to walk to his mother's house to spend the night. Mrs. Wright had secreted his car keys, and refused to surrender them to the appellant. The appellant had on a shirt with sleeves rolled up, and it was a rather cold night.
After some argument with Mrs. Wright as to whether he would leave the house that night, the appellant obtained his pistol from a linen closet. During the struggle for this pistol it fired and a bullet entered Mrs. Wright's body just above the clavicle bone and emerged below at about the fifth rib. Her death resulted very quickly from this wound.
The appellant called his mother oer the telephone and in turn the Sheriff's office was called.
The shooting apparently occurred around 10 or 10:30 at night. The Sheriff's office received the call around 11:45 P.M. Sheriff Brewer immediately drove to the scene as did Mr. Clinton Perkins, the coroner of Talladega County. Sheriff Brewer arrived at the scene at about 12:10 A.M., and the coroner shortly thereafter. Mr. and Mrs. Harvey Wright, parents of the appellant, and Deputy Freeman had also gone to the home earlier after they received the call from the appellant.
At the time the officers arrived at the scene they found the victim lying on the bed with her face covered by a blanket, and much blood was in evidence. The appellant was distraught, loud and boisterous, and in an intoxicated condition.
After a preliminary investigation, the appellant was placed under arrest and taken to the county jail in Talladega. Prior to being jailed he was interviewed by Sheriff Brewer in his office. This interview took place about 2 A.M. Sheriff Brewer testified that the appellant at this time had sobered up.
Sheriff Brewer testified that prior to interrogating the appellant he informed him that he had a right to remain silent and that he had the privilege of calling a lawyer. In this regard Sheriff Brewer testified:
As to this statement, Sheriff Brewer testified that the appellant told him that when he took his pistol from the linen closet he and his wife began to struggle over the possession of the pistol and that it discharged accidentally. The appellant illustrated the position of his wife and himself at the time the gun was fired, and according to Sheriff Brewer they were both standing up and the end of the pistol barrel was fourteen inches distant from the victim's body. This distance was measured by the Sheriff in accordance with the positions illustrated by the appellant. During this interview the appellant maintained that the shooting was accidental and made such statements as that he had rather been shot than his wife, etc.
The appellant also stated that on the occasion of a prior disagreement, his wife had hidden his pistol because she was afraid that he would shoot her; that when he returned to the house after accompanying the Millers to their car as they departed, he was as mad as he had ever been. During his first statement the appellant denied that he had pulled the trigger to the gun.
The next morning the appellant was again interviewed by Sheriff Brewer around 10:50 A.M. His statement at this time was substantially the same as the night before except he said he now remembered that he may have accidentally pulled the trigger one time.
Prior to this interview Sheriff Brewer testified that he again informed the appellant of his constitutional right to remain silent, and further that no reward or hope of reward, and no coercion had been exercised toward the appellant.
Later that day, about 6:45 P.M., the appellant was interviewed by Mr. Robert J. Johnson an assistant toxicologist, who had by then performed an autopsy on the body of the deceased. Mr. Johnson testified that at the time of his interview the appellant was told that he could have Mr. Love, who Mr. Johnson understood was appellant's attorney, present if he so desired but the appellant replied that he did not wish to have Mr. Love present and was also told he could remain silent if he wished. The appellant again gave a statement substantially the same as the second statement he had given to Sheriff Brewer, and again illustrated the position of his wife and himself at the time the gun as fired.
Mr. Johnson performed powder burn experiments with the appellant's pistol. In these firing tests Mr. Johnson used the same type of ammunition as the empty shell that was found in the pistol after the shooting. These tests showed that the pistol, when fired with this type of shell, would produce powder burns definitely at a distance of twenty inches. There were three bullet holes in the blouse which the deceased was wearing at the time she was shot but these bullet holes resulted from creases in the blouse and not from multiple bullets. Microscopic and chemical examination of the blouse by Mr. Johnson failed to show any powder burns on the blouse.
The appellant did not testify in the trial below, but did introduce a number of character witnesses.
In rebuttal the state introduced as a witness Mrs. Mary Ponder. Mrs. Ponder testified that she and the victim had been to a football game in Auburn some eleven days before the killing. Returning from the game they stopped stopped by the Wright's home where the appellant joined them and the trio then drove to the Miller's home in Anniston. Mr. and Mrs. Miller had had an argument and she was leaving the house as they arrived. They went in. Shortly, Mr. Miller went in search of Mrs. Miller. The appellant came into the room where Mrs. Wright and Mary Ponder were and began to choke his wife. According to Mrs. Ponder, Mrs. Wright began to gasp for breath and she undertook to pull the appellant's hands loose from his wife's neck. In this regard the record shows the following:
'Q Did you pull with all your might and all your strength to pull him loose from Patsy?
'A Yes.
'Q And did you eventually pull him loose from her?
'A No. He turned her loose.
'Q He turned her loose?
'A Yes.
'Q When he turned her loose what did he do next if anything?
'A He grabbed hold of me and crushed my chest.
'Q Do you know of your own personal knowledge whether upon that occasion that you had a rib that was fractured?
'A Yes.
'Q Was there an X-ray later taken of that injury?
'A Yes.
'Q Is that X-ray now in the possession of Dr. Toole the medical doctor?
'A Yes.
In the trial below the state introduced as witnesses Mr. and Mrs. Harvey Wright, parents of the appellant. The portions of their testimony, material to this review occurred during their voir dire examination in connection with the introduction of the statements made by the appellant. We note here that all voir dire examinations, including those going to the voluntariness of appellant's statements, were had outside the presence of the jury.
Mr. Wright testified that after the appellant had been taken to Sheriff Brewer's automobile he was placed in the back seat. He and Mrs. Wright went to the automobile. Sheriff Brewer was sitting under the wheel. Mr. Wright asked if he could see his son the next morning. Then, according to Mr. Wright:
'He said, And my wife was standing by the side of me and Perkins was standing behind her. And I says, 'Son, I'll be down in the morning and see you and I'll get a lawyer.' And Perkins put his hand up on my wife's shoulder and says,
On her voir dire...
To continue reading
Request your trial
-
Allen v. State
...of illustration, to historical facts and public characters, or to principles of divine law or biblical teachings.' Wright v. State, 279 Ala. 543, 550-51, 188 So.2d 272 (1966). See also Barbee v. State, 395 So.2d 1128, 1134-35 (Ala.Cr.App.1981). There was evidence that [the defendant] was a ......
-
Williams v. State
...of divine law or biblical teachings." Poole v. State, 292 Ala. 590, 592, 298 So.2d 89, 91 (1974) (quoting Wright v. State, 279 Ala. 543, 550-51, 188 So.2d 272, 279 (1966)). General appeals for law enforcement are within the permissible range of a prosecutor's closing argument. Hester v. Sta......
-
Gobble v. State, No. CR-05-0225 (Ala. Crim. App. 2/5/2010)
...(R. 355) Although it is true that quotations from the Bible are generally allowed during closing arguments, see, e.g., Wright v. State, 279 Ala. 543, 188 So. 2d 272 (1966), it is clear that the statement made here went beyond the `wide latitude' allowed counsel in closing arguments. See San......
-
Barksdale v. State
...remark that `[t]his man slaughtered him' did not overstep the bounds of fairness and impartiality). See also Wright v. State, 279 Ala. 543, 550-51, 188 So.2d 272, 279 (1966) (`[a]rgument of counsel should not be so restricted as to prevent reference, by way of illustration, to historical 76......