157 Va. 800 | Va. | 1931
delivered the opinion of the court.
Plaintiff in error, Slemp Puckett, defendant in the court below, was indicted for the murder of Dave Wilson, and on
The action of the court in refusing to set aside the verdict is assigned as error.
The accused admitted the killing of Wilson and upon his trial relied on the plea of self-defense.
The evidence, in chief, of the defendant appears' in the record in narrative form as follows:
“The defendant, Slemp Puckett, ■ stated that he was sixteen years of age at the .time of the trial, and wpuld be seventeen years of age in March, 1930; that he lived with his mother and father on Indian creek, in Tazewell county, Virginia; that prior to the night of the difficulty he had never seen deceased- and knew, nothing about him; that on Wednesday night, the night of the difficulty, deceased came to his father’s house and 'hollered,’ at a time when defendant, his younger brother and his father, James W. Puckett, were sitting before their fire; that defendant went to the door and asked deceased what he wanted, and he stated that he wanted somebody to show him the way across the river to Will Witt’s home; that defendant slipped on his shoes, and without putting on his coat went out of the house to where the deceased was standing, and went in front of the-deceased over-the foot-log across Little river to the far side,- at which point he told deceased how to follow the road and go by Ed. Gillespie’s home, to the house of Will Witt, the Will Witt home being about 300 yards south of the Ed. Gillespie home;- that deceased then, -instead of going in the direction pointed out, started in another direction; that, the defendant called him back and again told him how to go, and then that deceased begged the defendant
Other witnesses testifying in behalf of defendant stated that Wilson, who had been a hard drinker, had on Sunday prior to the homicide (which occurred on the night of November 6, 1929), been confined in jail on a charge of drunkenness, during which time he made threats against the “Puckett boys,” charging them with having informed the officers of his drunken condition.
It also appears in evidence that when Wilson could not
The case made by the Commonwealth against the defendant may be thus stated: Wilson was a boarder in the home of Mrs. Alta Lester; on the day of the homicide Wilson arrived at the home of Mrs. Lester in the morning and stayed there until 4 P. M.; he was in an intoxicated condition; he had in his possession a deck of marked cards, seven dollars in silver, some paper money and some “small change.”
Hubert Peery, a witness, testified that on the morning following the killing the defendant stated to him that when Wilson threatened to cut defendant’s throat that he, defendant, picked up the piece of fence rail and struck Wilson one blow; that he had no intention of killing him but was merely trying to get away from him.
L. F. Harman, sheriff of the county, testified that on the morning following the homicide defendant pointed out to him and S. F. Lewis, his deputy, the place where the fence rail had been lying; that they examined the ground and found no “sign” of the rail having lain at the place indicated; that there was no brown grass at the point indicated by defendant, nor any evidence whatever of a “groove” in the soil. Harman further stated that in making an examination of the locality where Wilson was killed, that at a point approximately 150 yards from where the body of Wilson lay and in the direction of the home of the defendant, he found a playing card on the bank of a creek, and upon further examination found in the creek, scattered for a distance of 200 feet, forty-nine playing cards. These cards were introduced in evidence and identified by Mrs. Lester as similar to the cards she had seen in the possession of Wilson.
Lewis, the deputy sheriff, stated that he visited the scene
An examination of the body of Wilson by the mortician disclosed. the following wounds and abrasions: “On the right side of the head the right cheek was crushed and broken—over right eye a deep wound about an inch cut through eye-brow—right .ear cut practically through entire ear; left side of head, the left-ear bruised, a-small cut-over ear and bruise about three-fourths of an inch wide, one and one-half inches long. About half way between base and top of skull cut more than tyo -inches long, going back about three-fourths inch under scalp. About base of head a small wound. Left little finger cut and. skull, crushed.”
The contention of the defendant that-the verdict is contrary to law is untenable. The-record does not embody any instructions, nor does it disclose any error committed by the.trial court in the admission of evidence. If any instructions denoting the law of the case were given on the trial, it must be assumed- that they correctly stated the -law.
In Virginia, .murder is either murder in the first degree or murder in the second degree. Every unlawful homicide is, .with.us, .murder in the second degree and the burden is on the Commonwealth to elevate the offense to murder in the first degree. If the accused seeks to reduce the offense to- manslaughter, the burden is upon-him.
In our opinion, in the case at bar. the question of whether the accused is guilty of manslaughter- is not involved. According to his statement he was violently threatened by a man crazed with liquor and turpentine, and in
It is argued that the jury should have accepted the statement of the defendant as true and returned a verdict of not guilty.
Buck v. Commonwealth, 116 Va. 1031, 83 S. E. 390, 393, is relied upon. There it is said: "Though the case has to be considered as upon a demurrer to the evidence by plaintiff in error, he is not required to waive his own evidence as to which there is no conflict or contradiction, and such evidence-is to be accepted as true.”
That case is not in point, as the facts are dissimilar. There, no conflict in the evidence appeared nor was there any contradiction of the statement of the accused.* In the case at bar glaring contradictions occur. The accused stated to two unimpeached witnesses that he only struck the deceased one blow and "that-to prevent' having his throat cut. ' The examination of the body of-the deceased demonstrated that he had been cruelly battered until life became extinct. The accused further stated that the piece of fence rail, five feet in length, came into his hand by accident. In this he was contradicted by the witness Peery who testified that accused informed him that the club was “picked up.” He is also contradicted by Harman and Lewis as to the location of the club 'on the ground. Only on his cross-examination, when confronted with the mangled condition of the deceased, did he modify his statement as to the one blow having been struck, by stating that he might have delivered more than the one- blow. When confronted with the inference that the deceased had been robbed he gave no satisfactory explanation of the scattered
The established fact that the deceased had money when he left the home of Mrs. Lester and that no money was found upon his person after the homicide is a pregnant circumstance.
The jury, whose province it is to pass upon the facts, had the unquestioned right, in the light of the evidence showing that defendant had been contradicted by both parol and circumstantial evidence, to refuse to credit his statement that he killed the deceased in self-defense.
In Chesapeake and Ohio Ry. Co. v. Martin and Porter, 283 U. S. 209, 51 S. Ct. 453, 456, 75 L. Ed. 983, the court quotes with approval the general rule laid down in Hull v. Littauer, 162 N.Y. 569, 57 N. E. 102: “Generally, the credibility of a witness, who is a party to the action and, therefore, interested in its result, is for the jury; but this rule, being founded in reason, is not an absolute and inflexible one. If the evidence is possible of contradiction in the circumstances, if its truthfulness, or accuracy, is open to a reasonable doubt upon the facts of the case, and the interest of the witness furnishes a proper ground for hesitating to accept his statements, it is a necessary and just rule that the jury should pass upon it.”
In Clopton’s Case, 109 Va. 813, 818, 63 S. E. 1022, 1023, Judge Keith quotes with approval from Proffatt on Jury Trial, section 363. There we read:
“The general rule, that where unimpeached witnesses testify positively to a fact, and are uncontradicted, the jury are not at liberty to discredit their testimony, is subject to exceptions; as, where the statements of the witness are grossly improbable, or he has an interest in the question at issue. However well settled the rule may be that the credibility of a witness is for the jury, the judge has power
That the above is the accepted rule in Virginia is reaffirmed in Metropolitan Life Ins. Co. v. Botte, 153 Va. 468, 480, 143 S. E. 625, 154 S. E. 603.
The final question is, does the evidence adduced by the Commonwealth warrant the verdict of the jury? In our opinion it does.
In Mercer v. Commonwealth, 150 Va. 588, 594, 142 S. E. 369, it is held that when the Commonwealth has proved the commission of a homicide and has pointed out the accused as the criminal agent, then it may rest its case, and unless the accused shows circumstances of justification, excuse or palliation, a verdict of murder in the second degree will be warranted.
That the accused was only found guilty of murder in the second degree and his confinement in the penitentiary fixed at six years may be accounted for by reason of his extreme youth.
We find no error in the action of the trial court and the judgment is affirmed.
Affirmed.