People v. Fitzgerald

Decision Date07 June 1898
Citation156 N.Y. 253,50 N.E. 846
PartiesPEOPLE v. FITZGERALD.
CourtNew York Court of Appeals Court of Appeals

OPINION TEXT STARTS HERE

Appeal from supreme court, appellate division, Fourth department.

John M. Fitzgerald was convicted of arson, and from a judgment of the appellate division (46 N. Y. Supp. 1020) affirming the conviction, he appeals. Reversed.

David N. Salisbury, for appellant.

Geo. D. Forsyth, for the People.

O'BRIEN, J.

The defendant was indicted for the crime of arson in the first degree, convicted of arson in the second degree, and sentenced to imprisonment in the state prison for the term of 10 years. The specific charge in the indictment was that on the 17th day of July, 1895, he set fire in the night and burned the parochial school house in the village of Charlotte, in which building there was at the time a human being. The building was the property of a religious corporation, and the defendant, as the pastor of the parish church with which the school was connected, was one of the five trustees who had charge of the corporate property and the management of the temporal affairs of the congregation. In this capacity as trustee he had procured the building to be insured to an amount fully equal to, if not in excess of, the actual value; the loss, if any, being payable by the terms of the policies to the corporation by its corporate name. It is not claimed that the defendant actually or personally set the fire. Indeed, it is admitted on all sides that on the night when the fire took place he was absent from the scene of the crime, and could not have personally participated in it. The theory of the prosecution is that the fire was set by one John Cronin, and it incidentally appears in the record that he was convicted of the crime, but that the defendant procured him to do the criminal act. Cronin was the servant of the religious corporation, employed by the defendant in his capacity as trustee, to have the care of the church, school house, parochial residence, in which the defendant resided, and other corporate property as janitor. Practically, the relations between the defendant and Cronin were those of master and servant, since the latter was, in the discharge of his duties, subject to the directions of the former, and to a very great extent, if not wholly, under his control. It appears that Nora Cronin, a sister of John, was a domestic in the defendant's house, and the claim is that the defendant, through her, procured John to burn the school house. In the criminal law a person concerned in the commission of a crime, whether he directly commits the act constituting the offense or aids or abets in its commission, whether present or absent, and a person who, directly or indirectly, counsels, commands, induces, or procures another to commit a crime, is a principal. Pen. Code, § 29. The issue presented for trial was, therefore, very clear and distinct. It was whether the defendant in fact did, either directly or indirectly, counsel, command, induce, or procure John Cronin to commit the offense charged in the indictment. It is not claimed that there was any direct proof that he did. It was competent for the people, however, to prove the charge by circumstantial evidence, and they attempted to sustain the case wholly by evidence of that character.

The people had the burden of proof, and a great variety of facts and circumstances were shown, all tending, as is claimed, to prove the main fact which was in issue. If the case was otherwise free from error, and the sole question was whether there was sufficient proof to warrant the submission of the case to the jury, we would, I think, feel concluded by the verdict with respect to the question of fact involved. But it is not every fact or circumstance from which an ingenious or imaginative mind may infer by some process of reasoning the existence of the main fact in issue that the law admits as possessing the force and certainty of evidence. In attempting to prove a fact by circumstantial evidence there are certain rules to be observed that reason and experience have found essential to the discovery of truth and the protection of innocence. The circumstances themselves must be established by direct proof, and not left to rest upon inferences. The inference which is to be based upon the facts and circumstances so proved must be a clear and strong logical inference, an open and visible connection between the facts found and the proposition to be proved. When a criminal charge is sought to be sustained wholly by circumstantial evidence the hypothesis of guilt or delinquency should flow naturally from the facts and circumstances proved, and be consistent with them all. The evidence of facts and circumstances must be such as to exclude to a moral certainty every hypothesis but that of guilt of the offense imputed; or, in other words, the facts and circumstances must all be consistent with and point to the guilt of the accused not only, but they must be inconsistent with his innocence. In the investigation of all charges of crime it is competent to prove a motive on the part of the accused for the commission of the criminal act. Motive is an inducement, or that which leads or tempts the mind to indulge the criminal act. It is resorted to as a means of arriving at an ultimate fact, not for the purpose of explaining the reason of a criminal act which has been clearly proved, but for the important aid it may render in completing the proof of the commission of the act when it might otherwise remain in doubt. With motives, in any speculative sense, neither the law nor the tribunal which administers it has any concern. It is in cases of proof by circumstantial evidence that the motive often becomes not only material, but controlling, and in such cases the facts from which it may be inferred must be proved. It cannot be imagined any more than any other circumstance in the case. People v. Bennett, 49 N. Y. 137;People v. Owens, 148 N. Y. 648, 43 N. E. 71; 1 Greenl. Ev. § 13. The motive attributed to the accused in any case must have some legal or logical relation to the criminal act according to known rules and principles of human conduct. If it has not such relation, or if it points in one direction as well as in the other, it cannot be considered a legitimate part of the proof.

In this case the people claim that the defendant had a motive in procuring the building to be destroyed, and that was that the church corporation owning it was indebted to him for arrears of salary, and that his purpose was to get possession of the insurance in order to apply it on the salary claimed. The defendant was the treasurer of the corporation, and the motive supposed involved a wrongful appropriation of the money, and the acquiescence of the other officers and trustees, either actively or passively, in the scheme. Whether such a motive is a legitimate inference from the facts or a remote speculation we will not now inquire. Such a motive does not, in the ordinary course of things, inhere in the relations of debtor and creditor. The chances of the creditor being able to reach the money when payable to the debtor himself are so precarious, uncertain, and remote that, ordinarily, a motive to destroy the property insured cannot be attributed to the former. It may be that in this case the defendant's relations to the corporation to which the money was payable, and his control over its action, were such as to justify the imputation. Much evidence was given to show that the debt either existed or was claimed by the defendant, and the character of the proof on this point was such that the jury could draw inferences from it quite damaging and injurious to the defendant's general character and conduct in other respects. If, however, it tended to prove a motive for the commission of the offense charged, it was none the less admissible because it tended also to prove that the defendant may have been guilty of some other crime or moral delinquency. The case was evidently tried upon the principles of the McKane Case, 143 N. Y. 455, 38 N. E. 950. There can be no doubt, I think, that the courts went quite far enough in that case in sanctioning evidence tending to prove other offenses against the accused than the one charged. But, although they were quite injurious to the accused, they had some bearing on the main point in issue, and this court was careful to point out the difficulty which a person charged with a specific offense has to meet upon such a trial with a multitude of inculpatory facts claimed to be relevant to the main issue. We observe now, as we did then, that ‘there is always danger in such cases that the specific charge will be lost sight of and disappear in the mass of collateral facts growing out of other subjects, and that the defendant may be convicted because of other wrongdoing with which he was not charged.’ Page 475, 143 N. Y., and page 956, 38 N. E. Any departure from the real issue in the case to investigate other transactions tends to divert the minds of the jury from the real question before them, and to prejudice the accused.

The defendant was required in this case to answer a specific charge, and that was whether he had instigated or procured, directly or indirectly, the building in question to be burned. He was not expected to be able to answer or to explain all the other faults and delinquencies of his life, and hence past transactions involving the suspicion of other possible wrongdoing, or acts from which inferences of moral turpitude might be drawn, should have been excluded, unless it can be shown that they had some bearing on the main fact to be proved. His moral character was not involved in the inquiry, since he did not make it a subject for debate himself, or testify in his own behalf. The rule that an accused party may resort to affirmative proof of good character in order to repel the presumption of guilt raised by the evidence, while the prosecution is not permitted to resort...

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    ...between thought and act, evidence of thought may be highly relevant and admissible to prove intent or motive ( see People v. Fitzgerald, 156 N.Y. 253, 258–259, 50 N.E. 846 [1898]; and see e.g. People v. Moore, 42 N.Y.2d 421, 428, 397 N.Y.S.2d 975, 366 N.E.2d 1330 [1977] ). But where thinkin......
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