Stephens v. Commonwealth

Opinion op the Court by

Drury, Commissioner—

Affirming.

Upon his separate trial under an indictment charging him and three others with the murder of -S. W. R. Faulkner, Willie Stephens was found guilty and his punishment fixed at life imprisonment. His motion for a new trial was overruled, he excepted, and has appealed.

He filed ten different grounds upon which he asked a new trial, but as the principal ground is that he was entitled to a peremptory instruction and that the verdict is flagrantly against the evidence, we shall discuss that one first, and to do so it becomes necessary to state…