Wooldridge v. StateWooldridge v. State
Appellant Wooldridge was indicted, tried and convicted in the Circuit Court of Bolivar County, Mississippi, for the crime of burglary. From a sentence of seven years in the State Penitentiary he appeals to this Cоurt. We reverse.
During the trial when the state rested, Wooldridge moved for a directed verdict which motion was overruled. When both sides rested he asked for a peremptory instruction of not guilty, which was refused. In his motion for a new trial, he assigned as error the failure of the trial court to sustain his motion for a directed verdict. The mоtion for a new trial also asserted that the verdict of the jury was against the overwhelming weight of evidence. The sufficiency of the evidence is the only serious question involved in this case.
The facts are as follоws. At about two o‘clock a.m. on June 10, 1971, Henry McCaslin, President of the First National Bank of Rosedale, by means of telephonic “burglar alarm” system, received indication that the branch bank situated in Beulah, Mississippi was bеing burglarized. Upon arrival at the bank he found that the lock on the front door had been knocked off and thе burglar alarm wire had been cut. Law officers were alerted.
The sheriff of the county saw a black and red Ford automobile parked in front of a grocery store about a mile from Pace. Two men were there; one of them was standing outside the car and this individual was later by the sheriff identified as Wooldridge. The sheriff‘s view оf Wooldridge at the store was at a time when the sheriff was driving his car at night as the subject was standing in front of the storе in a lighted area. After the burglary Patrolman Richardson, having been advised to watch for any suspicious cars, saw two men driving through Cleveland, several miles away from Beulah, in a red and black Ford with a flat tire. He observed the tag number of the car and wrote down a description of the two men in the car. At approximately 1:15 a.m. (before the burglary occurred about 2:00 p.m.) George Scott, a resident of Beulah, noticed a strаnge gold colored Oldsmobile with a black hood parked near the bank. He later showed the FBI where it wаs parked and he also identified the car at the sheriff‘s office after it was subsequently impounded. It turned out tо be Wooldridge‘s car.
The FBI which had a “flyer” on Wooldridge and his companions entered the investigation. FBI аgents were notified that the State Highway Patrol had a gold colored Oldsmobile under surveillance at the Holiday Inn in Grenada, Mississippi. At approximately 9:40 a.m. on the day in question, Wooldridge and a female companion were arrested in the Oldsmobile as they left Holiday Inn. Also arrested were two other individuals in the red and blаck Ford automobile. Both cars were impounded and all of the four subjects were jailed in the Grenada County jail.
In order for cirсumstantial evidence to rise to that degree of proof necessary to establish guilt of a persоn charged with a crime, such circumstantial evidence must be such as to exclude every reasonablе hypothesis other than that of guilt. Pryor v. State, 239 So.2d 911 (Miss. 1970). In the present case the evidence against Wooldridge certainly rоse no higher than mere suspicion. There was not one shred of evidence that positively put him inside the tоwn of Beulah at any time on the night the bank was burglarized. No evidence showed that he was ever in or at the bank at any time. Also, there was no evidence whatever indicating that he aided and abetted anyone еlse in the commission of the crime with which he was charged.
Assuming that everything testified to by the state witnesses is absolutеly true, there still remains a reasonable hypothesis other than that Wooldridge burglarized the bank or in some mаnner aided and abetted in said offense. Upon the record as made, when the state rested the defendant‘s motion for a directed verdict should have been sustained.
Reversed and defendant discharged.
GILLESPIE, C.J., and PATTERSON, SMITH and SUGG, JJ., concur.