Smith v. State

Ed. F. McFaddin, Associate Justice.

Appellant, B. N. (“Bill”) Smith, was convicted of murder in the first degree for the homicide of Buck Layne; and the jury fixed the punishment at life imprisonment. The motion for new trial contains forty-one assignments, which we group and discuss in topic headings:

I. Sufficiency Of The Evidence. Viewing the evidence in the light most favorable to the verdict,1 the facts appear as herein recited. On October 29, 1955, the badly decomposed body of Buck Layne was found in a secluded section of woodland near the “old Ben Thomas place” off of Highway No. 8 in…