84 Pa. 107 | Pa. | 1877
delivered the opinion of the court,
We come to the exceptions taken in the trial. On the morning of the 6th of July 1875, about two o’clock, Benjamin F. Yost was shot by two men, while he was in the act of extinguishing a lamp, in the borough of Tamaqua, Schuylkill county. Hugh McGehan and James Boyle, the men shown to have shot him, resided at Summit Hill, about eight miles distant, and were strangers to him. No motive, such as ordinarily influence men to commit so great a crime, was shown to exist on their part. They were neither insane
The chief witnesses by whom the organization called the “ Ancient Order of Hibernians,” but more commonly knoAvn as the “Molly Maguires,” was shown to exist, and its purposes, practices, passwords and signs, Avere James Kerrigan, a member of the order, and a party to the killing of one John P. Jones in return for the killing of Benjamin E. Yost, and James McParlan,- a detective, who procured himself to be admitted a member of the order for the purpose of obtaining its secrets and frustrating its designs. Standing alone, the testimony of Kerrigan would be Avorthless, and even McParlan’s, without confirmation, Avould be weak and perhaps unconvincing. Hence, the Commonwealth felt the necessity of sustaining the narratives of these witnesses by a long array of circumstances, beginning before the murder of Yost and running doAvn to the subsequent killing of Jones by way of return. These circumstances constituted
Thus the entire body of the evidence became necessary to show the conspiracy which linked all the prisoners together, to show that they were combined in the most intimate relations, and in a common purpose, that their subsequent conduct and confessions were thereby connected and made competent against each other, and that all these combinations and purposes led directly to the commission of another murder, that of Jones, as the return price of the killing of Yost, which became linked to each other, as a part of the evidence exhibiting the nature and effect of the combination leading to the killing of Yost. The whole network of the evidence is so complicated, and so clearly united and connected together in proving the guilt of all prisoners, and their motives and the agencies employed, it is not possible to strike out the subsequent facts without destroying to a great extent the unity and relevancy of those which preceded the act. McParlan’s testimony strongly corroborates Kerrigan’s, and both are sustained and supported by other witnesses as to facts, before, at the time of, and after the murder.
When these two purposes of the testimony are borne in mind we see clearly that the objections to the evidence constituting the second and third errors, and fourth to the ninth inclusive, are without weight. We must look at the real competency of the evidence and not at the order of its reception; and when we find that it was all finally competent, we will not reverse, because of the time or order of its introduction. In this connection we may notice that part of
The relevancy of the evidence set out in the assignments of error down to the 16th, is made manifest by what has been said. The evidence is not simply corroborative of the testimony of Kerrigan, it is to a large extent confirmatory and independent, lending strength to those parts which in themselves tend to establish the guilt of the prisoners. This case is well illustrated by ¿Esop's fable of the bundle of rods. One by one each stick may be taken away and easily broken, but the united fagot resists the strength that would destroy it.
The evidence being properly before the jury we cannot perceive that the court committed error in charging upon it.
The sentence of the Court of Oyer and Terminer is therefore affirmed, and the record is ordered to be - remitted for execution of the sentence according to law.