17 S.E.2d 714 | Ga. | 1941
The evidence, although circumstantial, being sufficient to prove the corpus delicti and the guilt of the defendant, and the verdict having the approval of the trial judge, the judgment denying the motion for new trial, based on the general grounds only, will be affirmed.
Adeline Brooks testified: "After Mattie disappeared I seen Will . . with a little paper-sack under his arm, . . and I said, `I am glad to see you turned out . . Did Mattie get you out?' and he said, `No Mattie didn't have me turned loose. . . Have you seen her?' and I said no, and he said `You won't see her, and she won't put nobody else in jail.' That was on Tuesday morning. I don't know what date it was." *159
Ruby Floyd testified, that on Wednesday following the disappearance, seeing the defendant, she inquired, "`Have you seen Mattie?' and he said `No,' and he said, `If I could see her I would go off in the swamp and beat her half to death,' and I said, `Why,' and he said, `Because she had me locked up,' and he said, `That is a dirty woman; she didn't have no business to lock me up,' and I said, `Mrs Watkins wanted her to go to work,' and he said, `She ain't going to work any more, . . and she ain't going to stay upstairs any more.'"
L. H. Chapman testified: "I am the coroner of Bibb County. . . In this case I was called, . . on the night of August 7th, . . to inspect the remains of a human body . . at the foot of Elm Street . . down in a field . . out beyond the old fertilizer plant where the old river swamp began. When I found this body it was covered up with corrugated paper boxes. . . It had some bricks over it. The body was lying in a ditch three or four feet deep. . . What was left of the body was there. All the legs and the meat was there, but her body and head — there was nothing there but the meat on her backbone. The skeleton was there, and the skull. The spinal column was there. Part of the bones in her arms had been dragged out on the bank, part of her arm. . . Some of the finger joints were missing; they had been torn away. I found part of them. The teeth were missing. I picked up some of them in the ditch; they came out of her head. I think there was just one or two front teeth along in there. I found them in the ditch. I found a gold tooth also. It was out of the jawbone. . . Just the front teeth were out of place. Her feet, what was left of them, were still in her shoes. She still had on socks. This little belt you have there was around her waist. Those tennis shoes were still on her feet. I found that hat down in the ditch, close to her head. I think her skull was lying on it. Those socks were on her feet. I showed these same articles to Mrs. Watkins. . . I showed them to Gilly Ann Ellis. . . I had the teeth pulled out, I got Johnnie Smith to pull the teeth out. He pulled out what teeth were still in place. I gave Mr. Smith the teeth I picked up. The teeth you have there, mounted on some sort of plastic material, I imagine those are the teeth. I gave them to him. I asked him to have them set up where they belonged in the mouth. I gave them to Mr. Johnnie Smith to have *160 that work done. . . I didn't go with the officers to arrest Will Wrisper. I did go to his house. It was in Parker's Alley. . . I was present when this bottle here was found. The bottle was found in his room under the mattress. . . He had the bottle between the springs and the mattress. There was some old rags or something. I found that dress that is cut up here in his room. . . It looks like scraps from that dress in that bottle. . . I didn't find a dress down there with the body. She had on, I taken it to be a pink slip or kimono or house dress. . . Her body was found around two and one half or three blocks from the 1300 block of Broadway. Nobody lives around where she was found. . . The body was pretty much deteriorated from here up [measuring]. You could tell whether it was a man or a woman from here down. It didn't have any face, nothing but a skeleton. I think this place where I found this body is inside the City of Macon, . . in a territory that protects the river from overflowing. It would be about twelve miles to the county line at that place. . . As to the tissues of the body from her hips down, all was there. The bugs had not started on it, except in her feet. They had just started in her feet. Her left side, more of it was gone than the right. Her chest, in fact her left side, was eaten down closer than the right, eaten down closer to the backbone than her right side was. That was very noticeable. The upper part of her body was kind of cup like, just full of bugs and worms and water. A noticeable difference had been made in the progress of deterioration in the left and right side. The hair was all gone. I thought it was a white woman when I first got there, and the next morning I got up and got a rake and found the hair in the ditch. There was no skin on her head at all. I had the bones examined at the hospital by a doctor. I couldn't find any fracture in her skull. Her front teeth were out. I don't know how they got out. . . I figured when I looked at it [the body] had been there . . eight or ten days. I don't know of my own knowledge whether a crime, if any, was committed wherefrom she died. I don't know that. I don't know whether she died in this county. All I know was her body was there. . . I found a pair of step-ins. . . They were out on the bank. This hat. I made the statement I thought it was under her head, but it (the hat) was found on the right-hand side close to her step-ins, on the bank." *161
There was evidence tending to identify the hat, shoes, belt, and teeth found at the body, and cloth contained in the bottle, as those of Mattie at the time of her disappearance.
Before there can be a lawful conviction of a crime, the corpus delicti, that is, that the crime charged has been committed by some one, must be proved beyond a reasonable doubt. Shedd v. State,
Was the guilt of the accused proved beyond a reasonable doubt? The evidence was circumstantial. In such cases the yardstick by which to measure the sufficiency of the proofs is to be found in the Code, § 38-109: "To warrant a conviction on circumstantial evidence, the proved facts shall not only be consistent with the hypothesis of guilt, but shall exclude every other reasonable hypothesis save that of the guilt of the accused." Counsel for the plaintiff in error rely principally on Murray v. State,
We shall not recapitulate the evidence. The further observation might be made that a reasonable inference therefrom is that the *165
accused had knowledge of her death before the discovery of her body. The statement in Thomas v. State,
Judgment affirmed. All the Justices concur.