11 Mo. App. 538 | Mo. Ct. App. | 1882
delivered the opinion of the court.
The defendant was indicted for murder in the first degree ; was convicted of murder in the second degree, and sentenced to twenty years in the penitentiary.
In trials for homicide, previous threats made by the accused against the deceased, and previous acts of hostility or preparation, are allowed to be given in evidence provided they were so recent, or were connected with the circumstances of the homicide in such a manner that they may fairly be supposed to throw light on the motives of the slayer at the time of the killing. 1 Bishop’s Cr. Proc. (3rd ed.), sects. 1107, 1109, 1110. There is often difficulty in determining whether such threats and such conduct are sufficiently near in point of time, or sufficiently connected with the fact of the homicide to be admissible for this purpose. But this case presents no such difficulty. Those of the expressions above detailed which were not aimed specifically at the deceased, were not, for that reason, incompetent. They were parts of a general chain of hostile threats and hostile preparation, taking place but a few hours before the killing, most of which were directed against the deceased by name, and none of which are shown to have been aimed against any other person. The court could not have excluded any of them upon the supposition that the jury might misinterpret them, as the defendant’s counsel contends with reference to the statement made by the defendant that he was going to have a settleriient with
We have already stated that there was no evidence tending to show a killing by lying in wait. This need not be discussed. It seems equally clear that the evidence was such that it was properly left to the-jury to say whether this was a case of murder in the first degree or murder in the second degree, or of manslaughter in the third or fourth degree. If the defendant prepared his weapons and planned beforehand to provoke deceased into this quarrel, for the purpose of killing him ; and, in pursuance of this design, did so provoke and exasperate him, and in the semille which ensued, the deceased using merely his hands, the defendant drew his knife and killed him, not in necessary self-defence, not under a heat of passion produced, by any blows which
We see no error in this record. The judgment is accordingly affirmed.