State v. Brooks

Decision Date18 May 1909
PartiesTHE STATE v. CLAUD BROOKS, Appellant
CourtMissouri Supreme Court

Appeal from Jackson Criminal Court. -- Hon. Wm. H. Wallace, Judge.

Affirmed.

Elliott W. Major, Attorney-General, and John M. Atkinson, Assistant Attorney-General, for the State.

(1) The confession was properly admitted in evidence. In the case at bar there was evidence on the preliminary examination that no inducement was held out to obtain the confession from appellant, and in the absence of any improper conduct upon the part of the officers to induce such confession by flattery of hope or promise of immunity or use of threats the confession was properly admitted in evidence. State v. Wooley, 115 S.W. 417; State v. Spaugh, 200 Mo. 596; State v. Hottman, 196 Mo. 127; State v Barrington, 198 Mo. 110; State v. Ruck, 194 Mo 438; State v. Patterson, 73 Mo. 695; State v. Jones, 171 Mo. 406; State v. Brennan, 164 Mo. 487; State v. Stebbins, 188 Mo. 387; State v. Kennedy, 177 Mo. 98; State v. Hopkirk, 84 Mo. 278. (2) If appellant desired an instruction on the theory of alibi he should have requested it or called the court's attention to its failure to instruct on that subject. State v. Graves, 194 Mo. 452.

GANTT, P. J. Burgess and Fox, JJ., concur.

OPINION

GANTT, P. J.

The prosecution in this case was commenced by the filing of the information duly verified by the prosecuting attorney of Jackson county, wherein he charged the defendant with murder in the first degree of one Sidney Herndon on the night of January 12, 1908, in Kansas City, Missouri.

As the information is in all respects sufficient, it is unnecessary to set it forth at length in this statement.

The defendant was arrested and duly arraigned and entered his plea of not guilty and the cause was set down for trial on the 17th day of February, 1908; on which date he was put upon his trial and convicted by the jury of murder in the first degree and his punishment assessed at death. In due time he filed his motions for a new trial and in arrest of judgment, which were heard and overruled, and thereupon the defendant was duly sentenced to be hung in accordance with the verdict of the jury. From that sentence he has appealed to this court.

The evidence tended to prove the following facts:

Sidney Herndon was a man forty-five years of age, about four feet in height, and had deformed feet and could only walk by the aid of crutches. He lived at what is known as the Navarre Flats, located at Twelfth street and Broadway avenue, Kansas City. He had an office and an adjoining bedroom on the second floor of said flats. There were some forty-four suites of rooms in the said flats, the building being a five-story one. The deceased was manager and collector of rents for the said flats, and owned an interest in the same; he had lived in Kansas City for a number of years, having moved there from Tyler, Texas. He was in the habit of reading until as late as midnight and would usually arise from nine to ten o'clock in the morning. The defendant is a negro man about twenty-one years of age, and had lived in Kansas City three or four years prior to the date of this homicide. He had worked at different times as elevator boy at said flats for the deceased, but had not been employed there for a month or more prior to the homicide. Deceased was last seen alive about 11:30 o'clock Sunday night, January 12, 1908, by the elevator boy, Vertner Jones, another negro. On Monday morning, January 13, 1908, about 11:30 o'clock, deceased was found in his office room, which fronts on Twelfth street, lying on the floor dead, having been struck on the head with an ordinary hammer some four or five times, and his skull fractured at least three times. The body of the deceased was in a pool of blood, one crutch hanging up and one lying on the floor at a distance of some six feet from the body.

The light was still burning in his office-room, and a book and a file case were lying on the table. The elevator stopped running at 12 o'clock as a usual rule, the elevator boy, Vertner Jones, and a brother of his, Emil Jones, and the fireman, Woodward, all leaving at the same time, about 12 o'clock that night. At about 11:30 o'clock Emil Jones, who was waiting for his brother to quit work, saw the defendant on the stairway near the second floor of said building and in an attitude of attempting to hide behind the railing. The defendant was noticed to have a piece of paper some five or six inches in length, rolled up as though something was contained in it. Emil asked the defendant what he was doing and defendant replied: "Keep still, do not say anything." The elevator boy, Vertner Jones, was the last one to see the deceased alive, and this was about 11:30 o'clock that night, when the witness went into the room of the deceased and turned down the lights and closed the door and left the deceased reading a book and sitting by the table in his shirtsleeves.

The testimony also tended to show that the defendant was living with a negro woman in a rented room at 1311 Wyandotte street, Kansas City, some two weeks or more prior to the date of this homicide, and that just a few days before the homicide the woman packed her trunk and left for Memphis, Tennessee, but defendant retained the room as his time did not expire there until Monday, January 13th. This room he rented from a negro by the name of Webb, who testified that he had seen the same hammer with which deceased was killed, and which was found in the room with the body of the deceased, prior to that time in the room occupied by the defendant. That on Sunday night at 8:30 o'clock, the defendant came to where Webb was living and said he had lost a key that Webb had given him and asked him for his key and Webb loaned him the key, and defendant went into the room and was in there about ten minutes. The defendant was seen by the elevator boy to pass the Navarre Flats that Sunday night near 11 o'clock going north on Baltimore avenue. A piece of paper was found in the room where the body of the deceased was, which corresponded in color to that torn from a shoe box found in the room occupied by the defendant. The evidence showed that the defendant had a small stove in his room and that fresh ashes were in the stove on the morning following the death of the deceased; that the bottom of a drawer in a dresser or washstand had been knocked out and burned in the stove, and the defendant afterwards admitted that he burnt the leather pocketbook which he had taken from the deceased, in this stove.

It was further developed in the testimony that on the Monday morning after the homicide, between eight and nine o'clock, the defendant bought him a suit of clothes, an overcoat, a hat and a pair of shoes and some other wearing apparel, from a merchant by the name of Samuel Ginsberg, at 506 Walnut street, for which the defendant paid $ 27 or $ 28. At the time he paid for these goods, Ginsberg noticed that the defendant had several ten and twenty-dollar bills. The defendant's brother testified that on this same Monday morning, he met the defendant on Thirteenth street and the defendant gave him $ 15, telling him to keep ten dollars and give five to his wife.

Defendant left Kansas City Monday night at about 11 o'clock for his late home at Carrollton, Missouri. After the murder became known, two detectives and an inspector went to Carrollton, and early Wednesday morning in company with the sheriff and two deputies of Carroll county, drove out into the country some three and a half miles to the home of the father of the defendant, reaching there about 5:30 in the morning. The officers inquired of the defendant's father whether the defendant was there and the father replied that the boys were down town, but the officers searched the house and found the defendant and a brother of his, sleeping in a back room with both doors locked. The defendant stated to the officers that he came from Kansas City four days before this time, whereupon one of the officers said to him that he had come down the day before, and he said he guessed that was right. Defendant was then arrested by the officers and taken to Carrollton, where he was placed in charge of the jailer, and a good breakfast was provided for him before starting on his return for Kansas City. On the way into Carrollton from his father's house, defendant complained of being cold, and one of the officers gave him a drink of whisky. At Carrollton the officers waited some three or four hours for the Santa Fe train and then started on their return to Kansas City. Soon after leaving Carrollton, the defendant made a full confession to Officer Halvey, detailing how he got into the building and into the room of the deceased and how he had killed the deceased with the hammer. He said that he went into the room of the deceased and asked for work; that he waited until after the elevator had quit running before entering the room; that he struck the deceased on the head with the hammer a number of blows and then robbed him of $ 150, which he found in his pants. He admitted seeing Emil Jones when he was on the stairway. After having made this confession to Officer Halvey, he repeated the same in the presence of Inspector Ryan and Officer Raptery. Officer Halvey then in their presence wrote down the statement as the defendant made it as follows:

"On Santa Fe train. My name is Claud Brooks, I am twenty-three years old. On the night of January 12th, I hit Sidney Herndon with a hammer and took $ 150 out of his pocket." After making this statement the officer asked him if this...

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