Davis v. State

GARDNER, Chief Justice.

The appeal is from a judgment of conviction for murder in the first degree, with infliction of the death penalty. The defendant is a Negro sawmill hand, and the deceased, Lee Beverly, a white man, on whose farm in the country defendant lived with his family as tenant in one of the houses on the place. The killing occurred late in the evening (about 6 p. m.) of September 20, 1941, when defendant cut deceased with a pocketknife under the left arm pit. There was no extensive bleeding, but the knife entered the chest cavity and produced death. It was not a stab wound, but a…