State v. Martha Woolley

This case comes here upon exceptions by the respondent following her conviction of the crime of perjury. It is alleged in the information that she swore falsely when a witness for the State at the trial of Howard Moody for the murder of her husband, Prosper Woolley, by testifying that she did not see Moody knock her husband down and did not see him choke him. Moody was acquitted of the charge of murder, but found guilty of an assault. The first question arises under the respondents exception to the denial of her motion for a directed verdict, made at the close of all the evidence. The grounds for the motion might well have been stated with more particularity, but we think that it was sufficiently explicit to cause the court to understand the issue sought to be raised, which was the absence of the direct testimony of at least one credible witness, with corroboration, showing the falsity of the respondents testimony. That the testimony was material to the issue in the Moody case is not denied.