Court Opinion

ID: 9807524
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-31 20:08:12.278392+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T11:41:30.445338
License: Public Domain

Bbogden, J\,
dissenting: I dissented in the former appeal reported in 196 N. C., 542, for the reason that the evidence “was vague, uncertain and inconclusive-as to the vital fact of guilt.”
The evidence in the present case is no stronger than that produced at the former hearing.
The only evidence of identity having any probative value at all, is certain tracks found at a distance of 110 or 150 yards from the body. None were found nearer than that.
The defendant lived within a mile or a mile and a quarter of the deceased and had lived there all his life. The purported tracks were traced four or five miles beyond the defendant’s house and then doubled back, making in the aggregate a distance of eight or nine miles. The murder was committed about 11:00 or 11:30 at night, and the officers arrived at the home of the defendant about 4:00 in the morning, and he was in bed. At the former hearing, bloodhounds had followed these tracks over the long and circuitous route testified to. When the hounds arrived at the home of the defendant they stopped within thirty feet of the house, and when the defendant was brought out the dogs “did not bay or indicate him in any way.” The Court held that the dog evidence was incompetent and a new trial was awarded. In this appeal the witnesses followed the same route the dogs followed in the former appeal. Hence the same evidence is still here, with the dogs left out. The practical result is that the defendant is perhaps convicted upon evidence that the Court has already held to be incompetent and inadmissible.
Moreover, the tracks found in the potato-patch about 150 yards from the body were ordinary tracks made by a broad-toed number 8 shoe. Some of the witnesses at the trial were wearing broad-toed number 8 shoes, *655although they testified that they did not make the tracks. The sheriff testified that “any shoe of that make and style would have made the same kind of track.”
The defendant sat up with a sick baby of the witness Campbell on Tuesday night preceding the murder on the following Monday. Campbell’s house is near the potato-patch referred to, where the tracks were found. There is no evidence that the tracks were fresh or that they were not there before the murder was committed.
Reviewing the entire record, I am of the opinion that the evidence is too thin and too scant to justify the taking of life.