State v. Feltes

• Decision Date: 14 June 1879
• Citation: 1 N.W. 755,51 Iowa 495
• Parties: STATE OF IOWA, APPELLEE, v. JOHN FELTES, APPELLANT.
• Court: Iowa Supreme Court

51 Iowa 495

1 N.W. 755

STATE OF IOWA, APPELLEE,

v.JOHN FELTES, APPELLANT.

Supreme Court of Iowa.

Filed June 14, 1879.

Appeal from Dubuque district court.

The defendant was indicted for the crime of murder in the first degree, and convicted of manslaughter, and sentenced to the penitentiary for eight years. He appeals.A. S. Blair, for appellant.

J. F. McJunkin, Attorney General, for the state.

ADAMS, J.

––I. The defendant is charged with having murdered his own son, Peter Feltes, about eleven or twelve years of age. The boy disappeared the last of April, 1876, and was not seen again alive. The corpse of a child of apparently about that age was disinterred near the defendant's farm, in the northern part of Delaware county, in June, 1877. It was found in a shallow grave, without a coffin, in a field that had been cultivated the preceding year. Such changes had taken place in it by decomposition, that it was not possible to identify it from its appearance. Even the sex was indicated by nothing but the clothing. A bullet was found in the skull, a fracture was also found in the skull, and it was of such a character as to indicate that it was produced by means other than the bullet. The identification of the body rests upon circumstances, and what the defendant said about it. His statements also constitute the principal evidence tending to establish his guilt. The defendant was a person of intemperate habits. Upon the morning upon which the boy disappeared, the defendant charged him with having been to Manchester and forbidden the saloon keepers there to sell him liquor. He told him that he must go to Manchester with him that day and hear what the saloon keepers had to say about it. This was said at the breakfast table. The boy made no reply, but soon arose and went out. The defendant soon followed him. The boy never returned. The defendant was suspected of having murdered him. After a few weeks or months he became talkative in regard to the disappearance of the boy, and especially when he was under the influence of liquor. He claimed that a few days after the boy disappeared he found him dead, and that he buried him, and concealed the death and burial, because his wife was in a critical condition of health. He offered to point out the place where he was buried, and did point out the place where the body of a child was disinterred. He was present at the disinterment, and said the body was that of his son Peter.

The first error assigned is upon the admission of the testimony of one Emma Squires. She was called to testify to certain confessions of the defendant. His counsel objected, upon the ground that he was, at the time of the alleged confession, under the influence of intoxicating liquor, and was affected by delirium tremens or otherwise insane, and they asked to be allowed to show, by the witness herself and other witnesses, that such was the fact, before she should be allowed to testify in regard to the confession, to the end that the court might sustain their objection to her testifying in regard to the confession if the court should be satisfied that the defendant was afflicted with delirium tremens or otherwise insane, or at least, if her testimony was to be received, it should be after the jury had been made acquainted with the defendant's condition. The court overruled the objection, denied the request, and allowed the witness to testify. Her testimony was, that in June, 1876, while riding along the road not far from the defendant's farm, she heard the defendant in the road a long way off making a great outcry. Upon coming up to him she asked him what was the matter, and he answered that the spirits had hold of him. She asked him what spirits, and he said Peter's. She asked him what he had done with his little boy that his spirit should haunt him, and he said he killed him. She asked him how he killed him, and he said he shot him and cut his throat. He asked her to take the spirits away from him. Upon cross–examination, she testified that she thought him intoxicated; that he was without any hat, and that the team which he had been driving had left him and gone on.

Evidence that the defendant, at the time of the alleged confession, was intoxicated or insane, was proper to impair or destroy the effect of the confession. The defendant was allowed to introduce such evidence upon cross–examination. But he complained that he should have been allowed to introduce it first for the reasons above set out. In our opinion, the court did not err. It was for the jury to determine what weight should be given to his confession in view of his mental condition as shown. Commonwealth v. Howe, 9 Gray, 110. The court, therefore, could not properly have excluded evidence of the confession. Nor do we think it was the defendant'sright to show his condition first, by way of preparing the mind of the jury against any undue impression from the evidence of the confession. The time when the jury was made acquainted with it must, we think, be deemed immaterial. They must be presumed to have given the evidence in relation to it its due weight.

II. One Trick was introduced as a witness by the state, for the purpose of showing that, in a conversation with the defendant, two theories were propounded by the defendant in regard to the cause of his son's death. The defendant objected to evidence in regard to the theories which he had propounded, because the propounding of a theory is not an admission, and evidence of it is immaterial. The court overruled the objection, and the witness testified that the defendant had two theories: one was, that his son might have been killed by the bursting of a gun in the hands of another boy while out hunting with him, and the other was, that one Zimmer might have dealt foully with him.

The propounding of a theory is not an admission or confession. It is at most a mere circumstance. In the theories propounded by the defendant, taken by themselves, we see very little, if anything, tending to criminate him. If they were so strange or naturally improbable as to evince insincerity and a design to mislead, the propounding of them would be a circumstance against him. As to whether there is such natural improbability in them, we need not consider. The materiality of the testimony rests upon a different ground. It was shown in evidence that the defendant stated to one Tillet that his son went west with some movers, and while walking by the side of a team of horses, was kicked by a horse and killed. Now, if the boy was killed by a kick of a horse, he was not killed by the bursting of a gun. The former appears to have been stated as a fact. It should have excluded the latter as a theory. The discrepancy, however, was subject to explanation. The theory might have been propounded at a time...