Raleigh, April 29 (AP)—John Whitener, once convicted of murder of a High Point police officer, yesterday was given a new chance for life by the State Supreme Court, when he was granted a new trial on his appeal from the judgment of the Guilford County Superior Court.
The Supreme Court’s decision, written by Chief Justice Stacy, was that Judge Schenck, trial judge, had erred in refusing to allow the defendant to testify on the admissibility of the confession he was alleged to have made and it was on those grounds that a new trial was granted.
Whitener was accused of having killed Officer Fred G. Claywell in High Point on June 9, 1925, when the policeman, with others, had attempted to break up a gambling game in Whitener’s house. Whitener was wounded in the same gun battle in which the officer was killed and for several weeks lay in the hospital under heavy guard.
It was while a helpless prisoner that Whitener made the confession introduced against him, and he later contended that he made it under duress and that his statement of his own guilt was false.
During the trial, his counsel offered to place him on the stand, in the absence of the jury, to testify to facts which, it was claimed, would prove the falsity of the confession. Judge Schenck states that “the evidence of the prisoner, he had he been allowed to testify and had he been believed, would have rendered the alleged confession inadmissible.”
In the case of J.H. Bolick vs. the City of Charlotte, the judgement of the trial judge in Mecklenburg Superior Court, overruling the defendant’s demurrer, was affirmed and the case must proceed. The court did not pass upon what it terms “other interesting questions involving the sufficiency of notices,” but merely upheld the overruling of the demurrer, which it terms a “speaking demurrer.”
From the front page of the Concord Daily Tribune, Friday, April 29, 1926
newspapers.digitalnc.org/lccn/sn92073201/1926-04-29/ed-2/seq-1/
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