State v. Williams

EXUM, Chief Justice.

After a trial in which he was convicted of the murder of Theron Price, of burglary with explosives and of attempted safe-cracking, defendant was sentenced to death. He now raises numerous assignments of error spanning both the guilt-innocence and the sentencing phases of the trial. We find one of these meritorious and therefore grant him a new trial.

I

Defendant introduced no evidence at trial. The State’s evidence tended to show the facts narrated below.

In the early morning of 12 February 1989, Lewis Rich, a security guard for Dewey Brothers, Inc., arrived at the company’s…