Bond v. Commonwealth

Defendant appeals from a judgment confirming the verdict of a jury which convicted him of murder of the second degree and recommended a sentence of 20 years in the penitentiary.

Hattie Lee Banks died as a result of a fall from the outside balcony of the fourth-floor apartment where she lived with her nine-year-old son and her boyfriend, defendant Charles Rhodes Bond. The son testified that defendant had struck his mother during a quarrel preceding the tragedy. A neighbor watching from a window in an adjacent apartment “saw this woman coming out the door over the balcony like a ragdoll”. A…