Will Swint was indicted and tried for the offense of “felony,” the indictment alleging that on the 15th day of April, 1924, the defendant did “unlawfully and with force and arms, wilfully and maliciously destroy and injure the dwelling of John W. Bobo, by and with the use of dynamite, powder, nitroglycerine, and with other specific substances to the grand jurors unknown, the said John W. Bobo then and there and at said time residing in said dwelling-house and the
So far as material here, the court charged the jury as follows: “The State contends that it has proved upon the part of the defendant a confession of his guilt.- You look and see what the evidence shows about that. I charge you that confessions should be scanned with care and should be received with great caution,
In addition to the general grounds the plaintiff in error has seven special grounds of the motion for new trial. These grounds complain of the charge as given, and of the failure of the court to charge certain principles of law. Movant insists that in charging as to the proof of the corpus delicti as corroborative of the alléged confession, the court failed to charge the jury that the corpus delicti must be clearly and unequivocally established by the evidence independent of the alleged confession, and nowhere charged the jury that the alleged confession could not be used by the jury for the purpose of establishing the corpus delicti, it being insisted by movant that there was no evidence independent of the alleged confession to establish the corpus delicti clearly and unequivocally, and that as a matter of law the alleged confession could not be considered for the purpose of establishing the corpus delicti, etc. It will bé observed from reading the charge of the court set out above that he instructed the jury: “What amount of corroboration is necessary to authorize the jury to find a verdict of guilty upon a confession is a matter entirely for the jury to determine, but it should be such corroborating circumstances as, independently of the.confession, tend to connect the defendant with the offense. . . To authorize you to return a verdict of guilty upon confession and upon proof of what we term in law the corpus delicti, that is, that somebody used dynamite to injure or destroy the home of Mr. Bobo, that such corpus delicti, such proof of the actual commission of the crime, must be clearly and unequivocally established; and if it is so clearly and unequivocally established, it still remains a question for the jury to determine whether it is or is not
Movant further insists that the court failed to charge and should have charged that even though the jury find that a confession was made, as contended, by the State, yet, before the defendant could be convicted thereon, it must be made to appear that the alleged confession was true, and .that such confession might be contradicted and impeached by any other competent evidence in the case; and that if the other evidence in the case satisfies the jury that the confession was not the truth, or was sufficient to raise a reasonable doubt as to its truth, then the jury should disregard the alleged confession altogether. We are of the opinion that, in the light of the evidence and the entire charge of the court, this ground of the motion is without merit. The other grounds of the motion are likewise without merit. We are of the opinion that the charge as a whole covered the issues in the case, and correctly charged the principles of law applicable thereto. If fuller instructions were desired upon any particular phase of the case, a timely written request should have been made therefor.
One other important question is to be considered. Did the evidence, independently of the confession, establish the corpus delicti, and otherwise corroborate the confession? Material portions of the evidence for the State are as follows: John W. Bobo testified, in part, as follows: “My home is on the Borne and Bock-mart public road, and is back from the road about 25 or 30 yards on the south side. I was at home on or about the night of the 15th of April, 1924. My family consists of my wife, myself, and my sister-in-law was with us then, my wife’s sister, Mrs. Knox. She was living with us at the time. About one o’clock on the morning of the 15th of April I was awakened by something like a crash. I did not hear an explosion, I heard a crash and glass breaking. I heard the crash and glass breaking, and I jumped out of the bed, and just as I did that I smelled powder or something like that, smelled burned powder, and I ran into the sitting-room, and I noticed as I ran. I turned the light on though, grabbed my gun and ran in there, and there was glass all over the floor, and just
S. L. Graham testified for the State, in part as follows: “I am clerk of the superior court of this county, and was such clerk on the 6th day of May, 1924. I know the defendant in this case, Will Swint. I saw him on the date of that paper, May 6th of this year, over here in the jail. I was called over there to the jail by Mr. Furney, to witness a paper. When I got there I found the paper there. This is the paper that was furnished me. Mr. Swint signed this paper that I have in my hand, Mr. Swint, the defendant in this case. We went to the jail, and Mr. Swint was lying on a cot there, his leg was in plaster of Paris, and Mr. Furney said he had that paper and wanted to know if Mr. Swint wanted to sign it, and Mr. Swint said, cKead it over to me.’ Mr. Furney was reading the paper at the time. I was standing there and he read the paper,
C. A. Furney testified, in part, as follows: “I am a police officer, Southern Eailway. . . At the instance of sheriff Wilson I went to the jail and talked with the defendant in this case, Will Swint, in reference to this dynamiting charge. I do not know how many times I went; several times. He made a statement to me about the dynamiting. Sheriff Wilson, Mr. Trazzare, and myself were all there when he made the first statement, the statement that he signed up. One of those statements was reduced to writing. That [identifying paper] is the statement that he signed. He dictated that statement to Mr. Trazzare, and he wrote it down with a pencil, and then we came over here and wrote it off on the typewriter, came here to the court-house to the sheriff’s office and wrote out that statement there. The best I recollect, we carried it back over there that night and read it and the next evening or night. I carried Mr. Sam Graham, the clerk, over there, and he swore to it. I read it over to him myself. That is the identical statement that was read over to him and he signed. It was the night before, I think, that the defendant himself read the same statement; this was on Sunday evening and Sunday night, the best of my recollection ; and it was on Monday evening that it was signed up. When I read the statement over to Will Swint just immediately before he signed it, he was sitting on the side of the cot, and I was sitting by the side of him, and as I read it he read it along with me. No
W. E. Yan testified for the State, in part: “I am 69 years old. I had occasion to be over to the jail sometime ago, during the city court here in June. . . I was by myself. To the best of my judgment he [pointing to the defendant] is the man I saw. I don’t know how the matter got up. I didn’t pay any attention
John Lane testified for the State, in part as follows: “He said he heard the explosion that night. He said he was back over there and heard that explosion, said it happened at ten minutes to one o’clock, or ten minutes after one. I forget which he said. He said he was away over home when it happened; he pointed back over the other way and said he was over there, and that was between that point and his home. He went on to say that these boys that were caught were mad with him, they thought that he turned them up. He called the boys’ names, Carl Lemaster and Frank Williams, and he says, ‘I am satisfied they are the ones that done it,’ and I says, ‘I have that opinion myself, possibly and another fellow,’ and I called another fellow’s name, and he says, ‘No, I am satisfied he did not have anything to do with it.’ The other man’s name that I called was not Walt Hedgepath. He then said, ‘I am satisfied Frank Williams, Carl Lemaster, and Walt Hedgepath are the parties that done it.’ He told me they went to the cement plant to get the dynamite, the cement place below Aragon, and got the dynamite at the cement plant. He said they went there on Friday or Saturday night before the dynamiting, one of those nights, and when they got the dynamite he said they carried it off to a certain place and broke into the box, and there was more dynamite than they wanted, and they left about hall of it and put the other in the cement sack and brought it away and put it in some party’s house, in a church maybe, for the balance of that night and the next day until they could remove it; then the night of the explosion that the arrangement was made for them to pick him up at this fellow Simon’s house on Maple street, where May Cox was staying at, and that they picked him up
May Cox testified for the State, in part: “He told me that if I did not come up to the barn he would call me to the door and stick a dynamite under me. He said he would blow me like they did Bobo. That aint the way he said it. He said he would put a stick of dynamite at my door and call me to it and throw a bottle of nitroglycerine under my door and blow me into hell like they did Bobo. Now they have it wrong in that paper there, they have it in that paper 'that’ and it should be 'they,’ and I told them so at the time.”
Robert Leah testified, in part, as follows: “He began to tell me. . . He said they had a time to pick him up, about 11 o’clock, these other three men, Walt Hedgepath, Frank Williams, and Carl Lemaster. He said they picked him up, and that he did not know for certain what he was going for until they got down the road a piece, and that then they told him and gave him a 38 pistol, and that they left him and went on down, I forget the road he said they taken, that they left him as a guard, and that Lemaster and Williams went on and planted the dynamite and then came back. I don’t remember which way he said they went after that. I says, 'As you have confessed, how did you feel?’ I says, 'You did not know whether you blew the women and children up or not.’ I says, 'How did you feel after it went off ?’ He says, 'To tell you the truth about it, we didn’t give a damn.’ He says, 'We passed the bottle and joked all the way back.’ He
Joe Riley Hicks testified for the State, in part as follows: ilI live kinder east of Aragon. There are two cement plants. The Southern States between Aragon and Rockmart, and the other one is northeast like from Aragon. I live out more in that direction. I have seen Will Swint before. I remember hearing about Mr. Bobo’s house being dynamited. When I come to Rome I come by there. I know where Mr. Bobo’s house is. I saw Swint before this twice, once aboxit two months before then, and then about two weeks, one or two weeks before, I saw him on Saturday night at Aragon. It looked like there were two or three others with him. I did not know the others. They were in an old Eord, I think; it was dark, and I drove up in front of the barber-shop and saw them sitting over to the right.”
R. E. Lawson testified, in part, as follows: “I live in Polk County at Aragon. I know where Mr. Bobo lives at Silver Creek. I heard something about his house having been dynamited in April. I know the defendant in this case, Will Swint, when I see him. On Saturday night before, or some short time before that, I saw him in Aragon. It was on Saturday night that I saw him, but I don’t remember the date. I did not know whether it was before the dynamiting or not, but it was before the dynamiting. I' saw him there in front of the company’s store. He was in a car and there were other parties in there with him, but I don’t know them. I was not very close to them. I judge it was between 8:30 and 9:00 o’clock when I saw them. I do not know which way they went from there.”
Burl Salmon testified, in part, as follows: “I am deputy sheriff'
B. E. Wilson testified, in part, as follows: “I am the sheriff of this county, and have been, this will make four years. I know the defendant, Will Swint. . . Will told me that he knew all about this whole business, and that he wanted to tell it. I had not said anything to him up to that time. I says, ‘Will, if you know anything about it and want to tell it/ I says, ‘I will go and call Judge Kelly, the solicitor-general, or the assistant solicitor-general rather, and I will have him come here and let you tell it to him/ He says, ‘Where is Mr. Furney at?’ and I says, ‘I do not know whether he is in town or not, I will find out about him also.’ Furney was in and out, you know. . . So I went and asked Mr. Trazzare, a partner of Mr. Furney, about his whereabouts. . . So in a little while Judge Kelly drove up, and I told him about it. He came to the court-house and got some paper and came back over there, and Mr. Trazzare, Judge Kelly, and Mr. Furney and I went up to where Will was. At Will Swint’s request. I sent for Mr. Furney. I understood that they had been friends for a long time. After we got up there Judge Kelly started talking to him. . . Before he made any statement at all, nothing was said to him by anybody by way of inducement or anything of the kind. Judge Kelly did the talking to him there. Judge Kelly told him to go ahead and tell it, and he commenced telling it. He said he, Walt Hedgepath, Carl Lemaster, and Frank Williams were the four that did it. He went into details. He said they went down the Lindale road beyond Boozville, and took the road that turned across the mountain towards Bobo’s house; that they were in a Ford ear; that it was Hedgepath’s car, a touring-car; that Hedge-path was driving it; that just before they got to Bobo’s or across
The defendant offered in his own behalf members of his own family consisting of his father, mother, two sisters, brother in law, and a young lady visitor, all of whom testified, in support of his defense of alibi, that he was at home all night of April 14 and 15. He offered the evidence of Walt Hedgepath, Frank Williams, Carl Lemaster, and others, tending to show that they had nothing to do with the dynamiting of Bobo’s house.
From a careful review of the evidence we are of the opinion that the jury were authorized to find that the confession of the defendant was freely and voluntarily' made, and that the confession was sufficiently corroborated to authorize the jury to find the defendant guilty. We are also of the opinion that the corpus delicti is proved by evidence independently of the confession. We find no error in the charge of the court, nor in a failure to charge; and the court did not err in overruling the motion for a new trial.
Judgment affirmed.