Raleigh, Dec. 9—The plea of Wilfong Trott, young Catawba County white man, that he was dead drunk when his companion drove an automobile into a Ford, causing the death of a 15-year-old Evelyn Rowe of Newton, failed to impress the supreme court, which this afternoon affirmed a judgment of Catawba Superior Court carrying a sentence of from 10 to 15 years in state prison for second degree murder.
Trott and his companion, Robert Michael, were jointly convicted in Catawba Court last spring of murder in the second degree for the death of the young girl. Michael, who was driving the car, accepted his sentence without appeal. Trott, however, sought a new appeal on the ground that the lower court was in error in convicting him of the second degree offense.
He insisted that because he was intoxicated and asleep on the back seat of the car at the time of the killing, he was not responsible for the consequences of Michael’s reckless driving, and therefore guilty of only manslaughter at the most.
The Supreme Court found, however, that Trott’s intoxication was voluntary and “voluntary drunkenness usually furnishes no ground for exemption of criminal responsibility.”
It noted from the record that the car was in the charge of Trott, but that he, shortly before the fatal accident, had directed Michael to take the wheel.
“He helped procure the whiskey and was responsible at least in part for Michael’s condition,” the court held. “After making Michael his chauffeur and aiding him to get away from a garage, he can not now declaim responsibility for the operation of the car under circumstances from which may be implied the malice that distinguishes murder in the second degree from the lesser crime of manslaughter.”
From the front page of The Concord Daily Tribune, Thursday, Dec. 10, 1925
newspapers.digitalnc.org/lccn/sn92073201/1925-12-10/ed-1/seq-1/
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