State v. Rose

• Decision Date: 02 January 1884
• Citation: 14 Mo.App. 567
• Parties: STATE OF MISSOURI, Respondent, v. CHARLES ROSE, Appellant.
• Court: Missouri Court of Appeals

14 Mo.App. 567

STATE OF MISSOURI, Respondent,

v.CHARLES ROSE, Appellant.

St. Louis Court of Appeals, Missouri.

Jan. 2, 1884.

APPEAL from the St. Louis Criminal Court, VAN WAGONER, J.

Reversed and remanded.

P. N. JONES, for the appellant.

T. B. HARVEY, for the respondent.

BAKEWELL, J., delivered the opinion of the court.

The defendant was convicted of murder in the first degree, for killing one George Ingram, in St. Louis, in April, 1881.

The deceased and the defendant were negroes. The homicide was committed in a bar-room on the east side of Seventh Street, which was a resort of prostitutes. The premises had a bar in front, with a sort of sitting-room for the women and their associates in the rear. This back room was separated from the front by a partition eight feet high with a doorway in the middle. This room had a side door opening into a narrow alley-way which communicated with a yard in which were tenement houses. The yard opened upon an alley between Sixth and Seventh, Wash and Carr Streets, known to the police as Clabber Alley. The deceased was living in concubinage with a woman named Lizzie Denney. The cause of his death was a stab in the right breast. He received on the same occasion four other wounds. One on the face, which was dangerous, but not necessarily mortal, and three in the back which were not dangerous, the knife not penetrating beyond the left shoulder blade.

On the day of the homicide, about noon, deceased was sitting reading a letter in the back room spoken of above. Three or four women were sitting in the room. Defendant Rose, Calvin Emerson, and one Williams, came into the saloon in a boisterous manner, and walked into the back room, and began joking with the women. The woman Denney, the concubine of deceased, entered from the side door. Williams threw his arm round her neck. She said she was sick, and asked to be let alone, complaining that he choked her. Ingram, the deceased, said: “Don't choke the woman; she has been under the care of a doctor.” The men who had entered together, then began to talk roughly to deceased, using a great deal of foul language. They drew their knives; but put them up again. Shortly afterwards, one advanced upon Ingram with a chair, and knives were drawn again; but not by deceased. Rose said: “Let us kill the son of a bitch anyhow.” Ingram stepped into the bar-room, and got a revolver out of a drawer, and stood there. Emerson followed him, with his knife open, and sprang toward Ingram. Ingram cocked his pistol and warned Emerson off; Emerson still advanced, and Ingram fired, striking Emerson in the head, who fell at once. Ingram then ran to the back room, as if to go to his room in the yard through the side door. Rose was standing in the back room, behind the partition; and, as Ingram passed him without seeing him, Rose caught him by the right arm round the neck, and stabbed him in the left side. Ingram freed himself, after a scuffle in which the stove was upset; Rose caught him again; and Ingram fired, hitting Rose in the hand. Ingram ran out by the side door and Williams cut him in the face. Rose stabbed Ingram again in the back. Ingram then ran into the bar-room, asking for protection.

This is substantially the testimony of the witnesses for the State. From their statements it would appear, that Ingram used no bad language and no threats, from first to last, except that he told Emerson when he pressed upon him, to keep back or he would fire.

One witness for defence testified, that the wound in the heart, which was the fatal wound, was inflicted by Williams, and that Williams cut deceased twice. Another witness for the defence testified, that Rose, after the first shot, ran into the back room; that deceased was “right behind him,” pointing the pistol at him; that Rose ran around a pillar in the room, and turned right round on Ingram, and grabbed his pistol, and that Ingram then fired the second time, and Rose stepped back and upset the stove, and that Williams then cut deceased in the back and breast.

One witness for the defence testified, as follows, as to the origin of the difficulty: “Williams got hold of Lizzie Denny. She told him to let her go; she was sick. Ingram raised from his chair and told him to leave that woman be; that was his woman. Emerson spoke, says he: ‘We've known this woman as long as you have, I guess.’ Williams spoke up; says he: ‘She is as much my woman as she is yours.’ Ingram spoke, says he: ‘You are a God damned liar.’ Well then, it was a ‘damned lie’ and a ‘damned son of a bitch,’ forwards and backwards, for about a minute, so fast that I could not tell who was cussing the fastest. Ingram spoke out as loud as he could, and said: ‘God damn you, I'll show you whose woman she is,’ and rushed by me, through the door, and ran behind the counter, and took Mr. Goldsmith's pistol.”

Rose on his own behalf, testified that he never saw Ingram before the quarrel; that he knocked the pistol aside when pointed at his heart, to save his life; that he did not stab Ingram, and that he had no knife.

In rebuttal, the state read the testimony of defendant at a former trial, in which he stated that Ingram cursed him and his companions for “fooling” with the woman Denny; that Rose remonstrated that he ought to address Emerson, who also had touched the woman; that deceased then said to Goldsmith, that the black sons of bitches were putting the women about, and that he would permit no black son of a bitch to do so, and made various threats; that Rose offered to apologize for himself and Emerson; and that Ingram came forward, shaking his finger at him; that Goldsmith advised deceased to knock them in the head with a stick of wood; that deceased then got the pistol. Emerson proposed to go home to avoid a difficulty. “I says, all right. So he started out a little before me. If ...