Case ID: ga_81/html/0696-01.html
Source: Caselaw Access Project
Author: {"author": "Simmons, Justice.", "license": "Public Domain", "url": "https://static.case.law/"}
Date Created: 2024-08-24T03:29:51.129683

Echols vs. The State of Georgia.
    While the conviction in this case was based upon circumstantial evidence, the facts shown were sufficient to exclude every other reasonable hypothesis than that of the defendant’s gilt.
    December 22, 1888.
    Criminal law. Evidence. New trial. Before Judge Harris. Coweta superior court. March term, 1888.
    Billy Echols was tried on a charge of having murdered her child. On the trial the State showed as follows : The child was found, about the middle of February, 1888, in an old dry well. Its skull had been fractured in two places, and there was a cord tied around its neck so tightly as to cut into its skin. It seemed to have been dead ten or twelve days, possibly a fortnight. It was fully developed in every particular; and the opinion of the medical witness who examined it at the inquest was, that it was born alive. Its lungs were natural and perfectly sound, inflated, and filled their proper place in the body, though not to their utmost capacity. The heart was not abnormal. The dry well was only a few yards from a house in which the defendant lived up to the time the child was probably born. The defendant was far advanced in pregnancy before the child was discovered, and her appearance indicated that she had been delivered of a child before the discovery of this infant. On the sixth of Eebruary, an officer, who went to her house to serve a distress warrant, told her that he would not move her things because of her condition ; and she made no reply. She was not a married woman, although she had one or two children. At the time of the officer’s visit, she seemed to be heavy with child. On Eebruary 11th, the officer returned to her house and found a mass of blood all over the mattress on the bed, and on the floor under it where it had run through the mattress. There were ashes on that under the bed. Shortly afterwards on the same day, the officer saw her, and she said she had moved. She looked so changed that he did not know her, and was not as large by a great deal as on the previous morning. The house in which she lived was the nearest house to the well. There was testimony that defendant was the only woman in the neighborhood who had recently been in a pregnant condition, except one whose child was born after the finding of the murdered infant. Defendant was walking about selling greens on the Saturday ipentioned. During the week when the infant was probably killed, or shortly after, a witness saw defendant washing clothes, which were very bloody; and when defendant was asked whose they were, she returned no answer. She denied having given birth to a child; had no infant with her after the signs of pregnancy had disappeared.
    She introduced no evidence and made no statement. The jury found her guilty, with a recommendation to mercy. She moved for a new trial on the grounds that the verdict was contrary to law and evidence and without evidence to support it. The motion was overruled, and she excepted.
    P. F. Smith and Wilcoxon & Wright, for plaintiff in error.
    H. M. Reid, solicitor-general, for the State.
   Simmons, Justice.

Dilly Echols was tried and convicted on the charge of having murdered her child. She made a motion for a new trial, on the ground that the verdict was contrary to law and to the evidence, and without evidence to support it; which motion the court overruled, and she excepted. The facts of the case will be found in the official report.

The only ground urged before us for reversal of the judgment of the court below was, that the evidence did not show that the child, found in the dry well was the child of the accused. We have carefully read the evidence in the case, and while there is no direct evidence that the child was hers, we think the facts and circumstances. of the case show with sufficient clearness that it was her child. The fact of her advanced pregnancy a short time before the dead child was discovered; the great amount of blood on her bed-clothing and mattress, the blood having run through the mattress on the floor, where it was covered up with ashes; the fact that she was seen shortly afterwards washing her clothes, which were very bloody, and her refusal to say whose clothes they were; the fact that the child was found in a dry well within twenty-five or thirty yards of the house in which she lived ; the fact that there was no other woman in that neighborhood so far advanced in pregnancy; the fact that she was seen one day apparently in a very advanced stage of pregnancy, and that a few days thereafter she showed no signs of pregnancy ; the fact that she had no infant with her after the signs of pregnancy had disappeared, and denied having given birth to a child, and the further fact that she did not undertake to explain any of these things, all go to show to our minds that the dead child was hers. These facts were sufficient, in our opinion, to exclude every other reasonable hypothesis but that of her guilt.

Judgment affirmed.