228 Ga. 571 | Ga. | 1972
William Hugh Avera was convicted of the murder of Donald Stickney and sentenced to imprisonment for the remainder of his natural life. He filed a motion for a new trial on the general grounds only, which was overruled, and he appealed to this court. He contends that the evidence upon which his conviction rests was wholly circumstantial and that it was insufficient to exclude every other reasonable hypothesis save the guilt of the accused. While the evidence was in conflict, the jury would have been authorized to find therefrom substantially the following facts: The deceased, Stickney, was a security guard with Armstrong Cork Company at its plant located on Broadway in Macon, Bibb County, Georgia. Armstrong employees, of whom the defendant was one, were on strike. On Sunday night, September 6, and early morning of September 7, 1970, the deceased was one of two guards stationed at the Broadway gate of the company’s plant. Two union pickets were at the intersection of the driveway leading from Broadway to the plant, approximately 75 yards from the guardhouse which was located on the drive between the road and the plant. Between 5 and 5:30 a.m., and while it was not yet daylight, Stickney was seen to walk from the guardhouse along the driveway in the direction of Broadway where the two pickets were at that time either standing or seated on a concrete curbing in the middle of the drive. He was seen to shine his flashlight into the grass or weeds and bushes in the ditch adjacent to Broadway and to the drive, and simultaneously he was shot by someone crouching in the ditch. He died almost instantaneously from the wound thus inflicted and made no statement as to who shot him. The two pickets were unable to identify the person in the ditch, but did testify that he was wearing a light blue or white shirt. The 8-millimeter Mauser rifle from which the fatal slug was shown to have been fired was found in a field to the
The testimony of Patsy Henderson as to the statements made to her by the defendant within a short while after the shooting occurred to the effect that he had shot the deceased was direct evidence of the fact, and thus the conviction does not rest wholly upon circumstantial evidence. Eberhart v. State, 47 Ga. 598, 609; Perry v. State, 110 Ga. 234, 238 (36 SE 781); Greer v. State, 159 Ga. 85, 94 (125 SE 52); Strickland v. State, 167 Ga. 452 (1) (145 SE 879); Bowen v. State, 181 Ga. 427, 429 (182 SE 510); Fields v. State, 221 Ga. 307, 309 (144 SE2d 339). The evidence was ample to show that the killing was murder and to identify the accused as the perpetrator of the crime, and the trial court did not err in overruling the motion for a new trial based solely on the general grounds.
Judgment affirmed.