State v. Hester

BARRETT, Commissioner.

This is an appeal from a conviction and sentence of life imprisonment for murder in the first degree. The facts, as the jury could find them, were established by the testimony of the appellant’s accomplice, Joe Lester Slayton, and by the oral and written admissions and confessions of the appellant as testified to by both lay witnesses and police officers, including the appellant’s uncle who was a defense witness. Briefly the facts were that on January 5, 1957, the appellant, Lynn Wayne Hester, then eighteen years old, and Joe Lester Slayton, then seventeen years old,…