227 Pa. 116 | Pa. | 1910
Opinion by
February 14,1910:
Insanity was the sole defense of the appellant, who, on his trial in the court below, was convicted of murder of the first degree. The spectators in the crowded court room in which he was tried were hostile to him, frequently exhibiting their hostility and their disapproval of the defense made for him by his counsel. Most unseemly scenes were enacted where respectful silence on the part of the audience ought to have prevailed, in view of the solemnity of what was transpiring before them. Though outside the court room exhibitions of hostility towards the prisoner may have been beyond the control of the court, within the court room such exhibitions were under its control and should not have been tolerated for a moment. The trial judge, of his own motion, should have suppressed the first outburst and not permitted the trial to proceed until an effort had been made to discover every offender for the pur-. pose of punishing him for his indecency and palpable attempt to influence the jury in the very presence of the court; and, upon failure to discover the offenders, the court room should have been cleared of all mere spectators.
In the motion for a new trial it is averred that during the course of the trial there came frequently from the many spectators in the court room open, manifest and hostile demonstrations towards the defendant and in evident disapproval
It is needless to comment further upon the scenes of disorder at the prisoner’s trial than to say that the jury sat in judgment upon him in an atmosphere polluted by the breath of hostile public sentiment, which had no right to breathe in the court room. The right of the prisoner was to be tried there decently and in order, as if there was no public sentiment against him, and the duty of the court was to see that he was so tried; but he was not. A resentful and jeering audience treated his only defense with open contempt and ridicule, with the evident purpose of trying to influence the jury against him. Our imperative duty is to direct that he be tried again. We have not been convinced of any other reversible error. The thirty-first assignment is sustained and the judgment reversed with a venire facias de novo.