Cottingham v. State

*429CATES, Presiding Judge.

Murder in the second degree: sentence, twenty years in the penitentiary.

Cottingham, according to the tendencies of the State’s evidence, talked one Odum into killing Eugene Helms. The motive was money — Helms having recently sold a Cadillac. Odum was seen near Helms's home on the day he was killed. Odum sold a pistol which was proved as being Helms’s.

The trial judge overruled a defense motion to exclude the State’s evidence. The defendant, as is his right, did not testify. He produced his mother and brother as alibi witnesses.

After sentencing on May 22, 1974, the trial…