47 S.C. 67 | S.C. | 1896
The opinion of the Court was delivered by
The appellant was indicted for the murder of one Peter Polite, the jury found him guilty, with a recommendation to mercy, and he was, according to statute, sentenced to imprisonment for life. The proof of the corpus delicti was by circumstantial or presumptive evidence alone. No evidence was offered in behalf of the defendant. The testimony for the State tended to show that on Sunday night before Christmas, in 1894, Peter Polite, having in his pocket $40 or $45, his savings from his labor that year, left the premises of John C. Davis, a few miles across the Savannah, in Georgia, where he had been engaged at work, and that same night arrived in Hampton County. His movements in Hampton County,
Without feeling necessity now to go that far, we feel assurance of absolute correctness, and of being safely distant from all dangerous ground, to hold that where the body has been found, as in this case, although burned and mutilated beyond recognition by sight, that circumstantial evidence, such as objected to in this case, is perfectly competent to prove the identity of the body found with the person of Peter Polite, alleged to have been murdered. The sufficiency of the evidence of identity, as of all other material facts, was wholly for the jury, and the jury in this case were fairly instructed that they must be satisfied beyond a reasonable doubt of the identity of the body found with Peter Polite, and of the criminal agency of the defendant in producing his death.
The judgment of the Circuit Court is affirmed.