Bennefield v. State

JOHNSON, Judge.

Appellant was indicted and tried in the Circuit Court of Jefferson County, Alabama, for the offense of murder in the first degree of his wife by choking her and found guilty of the offense of murder in the second degree. His punishment was fixed at twenty years imprisonment in the State penitentiary. He appeals to this court from that judgment.

The tendency of the evidence was that on Saturday night, August 31, 1963, a Mrs. Sue Bennefield was killed. The cause of death, according to Dr. Lamar C. Meigs, was “a compression force applied to the neck”. About 9:30 P.M., a witness,…