Samsell v. StateSamsell v. State
The defendant, Tommy Samsell, was indicted and tried at the August, 1965, term of Walker Superior Court for the murder of Newborn Bolt by shooting him with a shotgun. The defendant was found guilty of murder with recommendation of mercy and was sentenced to life imprisonment. The defendant filed a motion for new trial on the general grounds only, which was overruled by the trial judge. The appeal is from that judgment. He enumerates as error the overruling of his motion for new trial on the general grounds, and more particularly that the conviction was based on circumstantial evidence, which did not exclude every fair and reasonable hypothesis save that of the guilt of the accused.
While the evidence in this case was entirely circumstantial, the facts, as hereinafter set out, were sufficient to authorize the jury to find that the evidence does exclude every other reasonable hypothesis save that of the guilt of the accused, as required to convict on circumstantial evidence. Code § 38-109.
Those facts are substantially as follows: The defendant and the deceased lived in a two-room house in a remote section of Walker County. There were two exterior doors to the house, one at the front which was never used, and another at the rear. The deceased occupied one room and the defendant the other. The two rooms were connected by a door. On the night of April 4, 1965, the deceased was shot in the back from a distance of no closer than one and no farther than eight feet. There was a large shotgun blast just below the left shoulder blade, which was lateral and slightly upward, and entered the spinal cord on the left, causing the spinal and vertebral column to be severed. The doctor who examined him and made the autopsy testified that the shotgun blast caused instantaneous death and that “as soon as that blast hit the spinal cord, he dropped right where he was, he was blown into the corner” and that he could not have walked, moved, talked, or said anything after that shotgun blast hit him.
The defendant made an unsworn statement in which he stated that he was
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. Laying on the bed asleep, heard this shotgun blast, man says ‘I’m shot,’ Newborn Bolt, and I jumped up, he walked in the room where I was and set down beside me hard and laid back a little hard, and that was the last was said out of him. And I set there, I didn’t think the man was even shot, thought he was drinking because both of us was. When I
It is not necessary to sustain a conviction based upon circumstantial evidence, that the evidence exclude every possibility or every inference that may be drawn from the proven facts, but only that it exclude every reasonable inference and reasonable hypothesis.
Dunson v. State,
In addition, the conflicting and contradictory statements of the defendant as to his freshly cut and bleeding right hand between the thumb and forefinger, which he first said was fungus, but the next day said he had cut on a piece of tin, on which the officer, upon examination, found no blood, and the fact that blood was found behind the lever which unbreaches the gun which was located behind the hammer on the gun are circumstances from which the jury could conclude that defendant fired the gun and in doing so cut his hand. His blood on the ring of his wheel chair, that he used to move the chair, and his blood on the body of the deceased other than on his back where the blast entered his body, and the uncontradicted testimony of the doctor that the shotgun blast killed deceased instantaneously, and that he did not walk, talk, or move after he was hit, other than being
The evidence was sufficient to support the verdict, and the discretion of the trial court in refusing a new trial will not be disturbed. Burke v. State, supra.
Judgment affirmed.