174 Pa. 137 | Pa. | 1896
Lead Opinion
Opinion by
The first and second assignments of error are founded on the judge’s use of the word “ felonious ” in describing the killing. But there was no error in this. The killing was not denied, and there were no circumstances testified to by any witness which in the most favorable aspect could reduce it below the .grade of felony.
The third, fourth and seventh assignments relate to the omission to charge on the law of insanity, and to what the judge said on the subject of temporary aberration as bearing on the prisoner’s power of conscious and deliberate action. There was ■nothing in the case which called for discussion of the law of insanity. The prisoner himself made no defense on that ground. All he said about his “ spells ” was that at times things “ would get black ” before him, so that he “ could not see where he was ■going, and would have to get up against the fence or hold fast to something ” and afterwards would not remember. But even he made not the least pretense to any insane impulse at such times. The learned judge stated the bearing of these temporary conditions of the prisoner’s mind on his power of forming a deliberate purpose and of knowing what he was doing, gave the
The fifth assignment of error relating to the charge on the subject of good .character, and the argument in support of itr rest on the assumption that the jury were directed to separate that branch of the testimony from the rest, and if they were satisfied from the other testimony that the prisoner was guilty, then good character would not avail. The charge however is not open to this construction. The assignment connects two-sentences as if the second immediately followed the first, whereas-in the charge as delivered they are separated by fourteen printed lines of very material bearing on this subject. This is most reprehensible practice. The judge did not use the word “ other,” or draw any distinction between the testimony as to good character and as to the rest of the matters concerned. On the contrary his expression was, “ where the jury is satisfied from the evidence in the case,” meaning clearly all the evidence, and then, after telling the jury explicitly that good character was of great importance and not a mere makeweight, he concluded the subject by saying “ where the jury is satisfied beyond a reasonable doubt, under all the evidence that the defendant is guilty, evidence of previous good character is not to overcome the conclusion which follows from that view of the case'.” This was a correct statement of the law.
There was no evidence in the case that called for any charge on the subjects of intoxication or self-defense, and the eighth and ninth assignments may be dismissed without further discussion.
The sixth, tenth, eleventh and twelfth assignments may be taken together as they all relate to the degree of the crime. The effort of the prisoner’s counsel was to reduce the killing to manslaughter, or at least murder of the second degree, and to this end they put forward in the court below and have argued here, in such varied shapes as ingenuity could suggest, the proposition that if the killing was done in sudden passion it could not be murder of the first degree. But no ingenuity can cover
The tenth assignment, which is the only one in the case that has given us any occasion for doubt, is based on the first point of the defense, that “ the killing of the deceased by the prisoner at the bar having been proved, the burden is on the commonwealth to prove beyond a reasonable doubt the deliberate and premeditated intent to take life.” So much of the point was affirmed but the second part, that “ if the jury believe that there was not a fully formed purpose to kill, but that the act was the immediate offspring of rashness and impetuous temper, the defendant cannot be convicted of murder in the first degree,” was refused. It could not have been affirmed without material explanation to qualify its apparent intention. Of course the fully formed purpose to kill is a necessary element of murder of the first degree, and any instruction that misled the jury, or left them in doubt on this point would have been clear error. But there is nothing of that kind here. In the first place the intent to take life, fully formed, is presumed from the use of the weapon, and certainly where as in this case it was fired three times. “ The killing with a deadly weapon was admitted.
We have thus gone over all the assignments in detail, and we find no error in them. There is no case in our books of more-willful and deliberate killing, nor any for a more trivial cause,
The judgment is affirmed and the record remitted to the court of oyer and terminer for the purpose of execution.
Dissenting Opinion
Dissenting :
I dissent from the judgment in this case. On the testimony of the witness Sayre, the jury might, at least, have doubted as to whether there was not great passion induced by sufficient provocation, at the time the shots were fired by the prisoner. Under such circumstances, it was clearly the duty of the court below to define what constituted manslaughter, and to call the attention of the jury to what evidence would reduce the offense to this lower grade of homicide. He gave no instructions on that subject; of this, the prisoner has a right to complain, and the judgment of the oyer and terminer should be reversed and a new trial granted him.