Court Opinion

ID: 9808233
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-31 20:31:00.245881+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T12:10:15.525081
License: Public Domain

Adams, J.,
dissenting: In S. v. Carlson, 171 N. C., 823, it was said by this Court: “The motion to nonsuit requires that we should ascertain merely whether there is any evidence to sustain the allegations of the indictment. The same rule applies as in civil cases, and the evidence must receive the most favorable construction in favor of the State for the purpose of determining, its legal sufficiency to convict, leaving its weight to be passed upon by the jury. S. v. Carmon, 145 N. C., 481; S. v. Walker, 149 N. C., 527; S. v. Costner, 127 N. C., 566. The effect of Laws 1913, ch. 73, allowing a motion for nonsuit in a criminal case, was considered in S. v. Moore, 166 N. C., 371; S. v. Gibson, 169 N. C., 318. Where the question is whether there is evidence sufficient to warrant a verdict, this Court considers only the testimony favorable to the State, if there is any, discarding that of the prisoner. S. v. Hart, 116 N. C., 976. The weight of the evidence and the credibility of the witnesses are matters for the jury to pass upon. S. v. Utley, 126 N. C., 997.”
Discarding the evidence of the defendant and considering that which is favorable to the State, I do not concur in the intimation that the testimony consists of nothing more than certain independent and unconnected circumstances upon which the State relied for conviction. The evidence, as I read it, reveals a series of incidents and circumstances which are so intimately connected, not to say interwoven, as to point directly to the defendant’s guilt. The corpus delicti was admitted, it was not denied that the homicide occurred at the home of the deceased after eleven o’clock at night. The evidence tended to show that at this hour only three persons were in the house: the deceased and the defendant on one floor, and the registered nurse on another. There was evidence of the defendant’s motive and opportunity for the commission of the crime, and her ill-will and purpose, of the significant circumstances under which she left Mrs. Cooper’s on the morning preceding the homicide to go to West Asheville, of her admission that “when dark came” Mrs. Cooper kept coming into her mind, and that she knew “that something was going to happen to Mrs. Cooper,” of the late hour of her return to Mrs. Cooper’s home — the assault, her conduct, her inconsistent -statements, her effort to conceal material evidence, and *23ber possession of garments, one of them bloody, owned by Mrs. Cooper and concealed in the defendant’s trunk, with other articles which were damp, soon after the homicide. These are only a part of the series of circumstances which were submitted to the jury in a full and discriminating charge. Not only is circumstantial evidence an accepted instrumentality in the ascertainment of truth; it is essential to the administration of justice, and in my opinion its efficacy should be maintained unimpaired.
I am authorized to say that the Chief Justice concurs in this opinion.