Court Opinion

ID: 7822391
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2022-09-07 17:59:15.886812+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T16:30:46.206671
License: Public Domain

George Rose Smith, Justice, dissenting. My strong disagreement with the court’s opinion is based on two considerations: First, as the opinion itself recognizes, this is a civil case in which the controlling question is whether the trial judge’s finding that Cecil Sargent participated in the murder of his father is clearly against the preponderance of the evidence. Whether he was technically a principal, an accomplice, or an accessory is immaterial. Second, we must view the evidence in the light most favorable to the trial judge’s decision, deferring to his judgment in matters of credibility. This murder was planned in advance, with a homemade gasoline bomb and two gallons of gasoline in readiness for the burning of the body. Donald shot his father at the house, apparently striking a major artery in the arm, but that was not the fatal wound, though it would eventually have caused death if not treated. Dr. Malak testified, and the trial judge indicated, that the immediate cause of death was two bullet wounds in the chest, making two holes in the lungs and one in the heart. Dr. Malak said that the lung wounds caused massive bleeding in the chest cavity within ten minutes and that the victim could have lived only a very, very short time. Yet some 45 minutes elapsed between the first shooting and the consummation of the crime three miles away in the truck. For that reason the trial court found, with justification, that one or more bullet wounds were inflicted at the place where the wife and three sons tried to burn the body. Death occurred there; so Cecil participated in the killing and could not have been merely an accessory after the fact. Cecil Sargent is not exactly an immature and innocent child. He was 15 years old at the time, criminally responsible under the law. He was no longer going to school, but was working at a garage instead. He was his father’s favorite son, but when his father in his agony appealed to Cecil for help three times, Cecil ignored his pleas each time. When Cecil was charged along with the other three survivors with murder, he successfully bargained for immunity in return for turning state’s evidence and testifying against his own mother and his older brother. He has admittedly told so many lies about his connection with the homicide that the trial judge was fully warranted in disregarding his self-serving statements at the hearing below — a hearing at which he was repeatedly evasive in his testimony, professing not to remember incriminating facts until he was confronted with his own testimony at the trial of his mother and brother. As for Cecil’s participation in the murder, soon after the first shooting Sargent appealed to his favorite son, Cecil, to call an ambulance, but Cecil gave the ridiculous answer that he didn’t know the number — as if a person had to know a telephone number to call an ambulance or the fire department in an emergency. After the shooting the group stayed at the house for a considerable length of time. Sargent was not able to walk, but Cecil and Donald held him upright between them and forced him to stumble with them to the truck. The father again begged his favorite son to help, to knock Donald in the head, but again Cecil refused to help him. Despite Cecil’s supposed fear of Donald, not asserted until weeks later, Cecil willingly got in the car with his mother and brother and followed Donald’s truck for three miles. There Sargent got out of the truck, but Cecil and Donald pushed him back in. Sargent was still alive when Donald threw gasoline on him. Sargent again appealed to his favorite son, screaming for help. In Cecil’s own words in his taped statement to the police: “Yeah, he screamed. He told me to knock him [Donald] in the head, please Cecil knock him in the head.” Later on, when the fire failed to spread from the bed of the truck to the cab, where Sargent was, Cecil helped the others try to push the truck down the embankment by the road, presumably to create the appearance of an accident. When a car was seen approaching, all four of the survivors “piled” into their car and “took off,” leaving Sargent apparently still alive and suffering. At the hearing below Cecil piously testified that when he got home he went to bed. “I was so upset and in a strain____It upset me real bad____Yes, sir, I was upset for about two weeks after my daddy died.” Not so upset, however, that he was unable to join with the other three in deciding what to tell the police. When he was finally questioned, more than two weeks after the murder, he first said that after the shooting he went to bed, thinking Donald had taken his father to the hospital. An hour later, after the officers had questioned the others, Cecil admitted that he had helped carry his father to the truck. At still a third interview, some four hours later, he finally revealed his part in the murder. In that long interview, conducted in his mother’s presence and taped, Cecil said not one syllable about being afraid of Donald or having been threatened by him. That came later, but when he was asked at the hearing below just what were Donald’s prior acts of violence, he said Donald threw a screwdriver at Roy once, hitting him in the knee, and that he himself and Donald had a couple of fist fights. That was all. I find no independent support in the record for Cecil’s statements that he was afraid of Donald or had been threatened by him. Quite evidently the trial judge, who had the advantage of observing Cecil’s manner on the witness stand, did not believe him. The administrator of the estate, which consisted primarily of a house and two acres, plus over $30,000 in life insurance, filed this petition to exclude the widow and the three sons from inheriting the estate and receiving the insurance money. The widow and Donald were hardly in a position to resist, having already been convicted of Sargent’s murder. Roy had scant grounds for a defense, having admitted to the officers that he helped plan the murder by making the gasoline bomb two or three days before the murder and having melted the gun with a blowtorch afterwards. That left only Cecil to disclaim any responsibility for what was in fact a group murder. He now appeals from the adverse judgment in the hope of being declared to be the sole eligible beneficiary, thus keeping the money and property in the family. I am dismayed that the strategy has proved successful. Adkisson, C.J., and Dudley, J., join in this dissent.