People v. Palmer

• Decision Date: 10 April 1888
• Citation: 16 N.E. 529,109 N.Y. 110
• Parties: PEOPLE v. PALMER.
• Court: New York Court of Appeals Court of Appeals

109 N.Y. 110

16 N.E. 529

PEOPLE

v.PALMER.¹

Court of Appeals of New York.

April 10, 1888.

Appeal from general term, supreme court, Third department.

Indictment of Frank Palmer for the murder of Peter Bernard, in Clinton county, in 1885, followed by conviction. The general term reversed the judgment, and ordered a new trial, and the people appealed.

GRAY, J., dissenting.

R. Corbin, of counsel, for appellant.

Lucian L. Shedden and John B. Riley, for respondent.

The statute is satisfied when the death of the person claimed to be P. B. is made out by direct proof. The allegation that it was P. B. who died may be made out by circumstantial proof, sufficient, etc. Best, Pres. 271, Wills, Circ. Ev. 164; 3 Greenl. Ev. § 133; Whart. Crim. Law, (7th Ed.) § 750; Rex v. Cheverton, 2 Fost. & F. 833; Rex v. Clewes, 4 Car. & P. 221; Best, Ev. (Wood's Note,) 788, 789; Taylor v. State, 35 Tex. 97. It is the death of the person, as contradistinguished from the disappearance of the person, that must be established directly. The only fact which the law requires to be proved by direct evidence is the death of the party by finding the body. Such was the rule before the Penal Code. The Code has simply put the rule into a statute, in language precisely equivalent. Direct proof that some one is dead becomes direct proof that A. B. is dead when the body is identified as that of A. B. The language of the Code has exactly the same meaning as if it had read, ‘the death of persons alleged to have been killed,’ etc.; an individual being put for a class, a very common usage in our language. It is a rule of interpretation that the principles of common law are never to be lost sight of. Their abrogation is never to be presumed. Edmonds' Introduction to Statutes, 18.

The statute requires direct proof of the death and of the identification. Proof of death is not proof that it is the person alleged to be dead. There must be an identification, or there can be no legal conviction. People v. Wilson, 3 Park. Crim. R. 207. Suppose the statute read, ‘The death of Peter Bernard must be established by direct proof,’ would any one contend that direct proof would not be necessary to prove that the dead man was Peter Bernard? Whatever may previously have been the rule, the amendment of the statute in explicit language requires direct proof of identification. When no ambiguity exists, the courts cannot correct supposed defects. Benton v. Wickmire, 54 N. Y. 226; 3 Whart. Crim. Law, § 12; McCluskey v. Cromwell, 11 N. Y. 601.

FINCH, J.

The prisoner was convicted of murder in the second degree, and that conviction reversed by the general term because there was no direct evidence which identified the body found as that of the person alleged to have been murdered. From that decision the people appeal. The question is a very grave one, not merely to the prisoner, whose liberty may depend upon the issue, but to the people, and the administration of public justice; for, if the law be as the general term have declared it, a murderer may always escape if only he shall so mutilate the body of his victim as to make identification by direct evidence impossible, or shall so effectually conceal it that discovery is delayed until decomposition has taken away the possibility of personal recognition; and it will follow that the tenderness of the Penal Code has opened a door of escape to that brutal courage which can mangle and burn the lifeless body, and has put a premium upon and offered a reward for that species of atrocity. This result is said to have been accomplished by section 181, which prohibits a conviction ‘unless the death of the person alleged to have been killed, and the fact of the killing by the defendant as alleged, are each established as independent facts; the former by direct proof, and the latter beyond a reasonable doubt.’ In the first clause of this provision the endeavor to state and describe one fact has involved the statement of another, changing a simple into a compound fact, and making it possible to apply the requirement of direct proof to the two facts of death and of identity, rather than to the one fact of the death alone. That some one is dead, is directly proved whenever a dead body is found. Its identity as that of the person alleged to have been killed is a further fact, to be next established in the process of investigation. If it be the meaning of the Penal Code that both of these facts, identity as well as death, are to be proved by direct evidence, it establishes a new rule, which never before prevailed, and of which no previous trace can anywhere be found. It has always been the rule, since the time of Lord HALE, that the corpus delicti should be proved by direct, or, at least, by certain and unequivocal, evidence. But it never was the doctrine of the common law that, when the corpus delicti had been duly established, the further proof of the identity of the deceased person should be of the same direct quality and character. And this becomes quite evident from a consideration of the history and philosophy of the rule. By the corpus delicti-the body or substance of the offense-has always been meant the existence of a criminal fact. Unless such a fact exists, there is nothing to investigate. Until it is proved, inquiry has no point upon which it can concentrate. Indeed, there is nothing to inquire about. But, when a criminal fact is discovered, its existence, for the purpose of a judicial investigation, must be established fully, completely, by the most clear and decisive evidence; for otherwise the after-reasoning founded upon it, and drawing its force from it, will be dangerous, fallacious, and unreliable. As the weakness of the foundation is more and more intensified while the superstructure ascends and the weight grows, so the circumstantial evidence built upon a criminal fact, not certain to have existed, becomes itself weak and indecisive, and more and more so as the suspicions expand and extend. If somebody has been murdered, a motive for a murder becomes a significant fact, rendered more so when identification shows it a motive for the particular murder. But, if the death is doubtful, the probative force of a motive dwindles to mere suspicion. In the case of Ruloff v. People, 18 N. Y. 179, the doctrine was both illustrated and applied. The death of the prisoner's infant child was not proved, but in its place was put the equivocal fact of a sudden and unexplained disappearance. The evidence might all be true, and yet the child be living and not dead; and, if living, every circumstance relied upon became at once fallacious and deceptive. Such circumstances gain their probative force only upon condition that there is a criminal fact which they serve to explain. But the corpus delicti-the existence of a criminal fact-may be completely established, and the need of direct proof satisfied, before the question of identity is reached. There may be direct proof of a murder, though no one knows the person of the victim. A dead body is found with the skull mashed in upon the brain, under circumstances which exclude any inference of accident or suicide. There we have direct evidence of the death, and cogent and irresistible proof of the violence; the latter the cause, and the former the effect; both obvious and certain, and establishing the existence of a criminal fact demanding an investigation. These facts proved, the corpus delicti is established, although nobody as yet knows, and nobody may ever know, the name or personal identity of the victim. Beyond the death and the violence remain the two inquiries to which the ascertained criminal fact gives rise: who is the slain, and who the slayer? the identity of the one, and the agency of the other. These may be established by circumstantial evidence which convinces the conscience of the jury, and because a basis has been furnished upon which inferences may stand and presumptions have strength. That I have correctly stated what is meant by the corpus delicti requiring direct proof, and that it never did include the identity of the victim, but left that open to indirect or circumstantial evidence, is shown by an unbroken and unvarying concurrence of authority.

Lord STOWELL said in Evans v. Evans, 2 Hagg. Ecc. 35: ‘If you have a criminal fact ascertained, you may then take presumptive proof to show who did it, to fix the criminal, having then an actual corpus delicti.’ In Rex v. Clewes, [109 N.Y. 115]4 Car. & P. 221, the alleged murder was in 1806, and in 1829 bones were found buried under a barn which the prisoner had occupied. The question submitted to the jury was whether these bones were the remains of Hemmings, the person alleged to have been murdered. It was sought to identify the bones by a carpenter's rule and the remnant of a pair of shoes found near, and also by something remarkable about the teeth. No question of the competency of any of the evidence was at all suggested, but its sufficiency was criticised, and finally left to the determination of the jury, which rendered a verdict of acquittal. In Wills, Circ. Ev. p. 213, it is said that direct and positive proof of the identity of the deceased is not required; and the case of Rex v. Cook is cited, in which it appeared that a human body had been burned, but enough remained unconsumed to show that it...