State v. Schaffer

• Decision Date: 09 December 1960
• Citation: 113 Ohio App. 125,177 N.E.2d 534
• Parties: , 17 O.O.2d 114 STATE of Ohio, Appellee, v. SCHAFFER, Appellant.
• Court: Ohio Court of Appeals

Page 125

113 Ohio App. 125

177 N.E.2d 534, 17 O.O.2d 114

STATE of Ohio, Appellee, v. SCHAFFER, Appellant.

Court of Appeals of Ohio, Fourth District, Lawrence County.

Dec. 9, 1960.

Syllabus by the Court.

1. One who has formed the purpose to maliciously kill another, and has deliberated and premeditated upon his intended act before it is accomphished, is guilty of murder in the first degree, however short the time may have been between the purpose to maliciously kill and its accomplishment.

2. The corpus delicti of the crime of felonious homicide involves two elements: first, the fact of death of a human being; and, secondly, other facts and circumstances showing the criminal agency of some one in causing the death. Proof of the defendant's connection with the crime as the operating agent, although essential for conviction, is not a part of the corpus delicti, nor is proof of the identity of the victim necessary to establish corpus delicti.

3. A person may be presumed to intend results which are the natural, reasonable and probable consequences of his voluntary acts, and the intention to kill may be presumed from the violent and brutal strangulation of an elderly woman by the hands and muscles of a young man of strength and vigor more than fifty years her junior. Hands and muscles may become deadly weapons when applied to the vital and delicate parts of the body of an old, defenseless person.

4. The doctrine that a criminal act may be excused or mitigated because prompted by an irresistible impulse, when the offender has the mental capacity to know the difference between right and wrong, and to appreciate his legal and moral duty in respect thereto, does not prevail in this state.

J. B. Collier, Ironton, for appellant.

Harold D. Spears, Pros. Atty., Ironton, for appellee.

DOYLE, Judge.

The defendant in the Court of Common Pleas of Lawrence County, one Billy Joe Schaffer (appellant in this court), was indicted by the county grand jury on five separate counts: (1) murder in the first degree; (2) arson; (3) mutilation of a dead body; (4) maliciously entering a dwelling house and attempting to commit a felony, and (5) burning personal property of a value greater than $25; contrary to and in violation of statutes making such offenses criminal.

The jury returned a verdict of guilty on all counts, and recommended mercy on the count of first degree murder.

It is strenuously argued on behalf of the appellant that there was not sufficient evidence to support a finding that the victim's death was the result of first degree murder. This court is asked, by the appellant, Schaffer, to reduce the judgment from first degree murder to manslaughter, and to completely eliminate the fourth count of the indictment, which pertains to the alleged wilful and malicious entering of the decedent's home, 'contrary to Section 2907.13, Revised Code.'

In the light of the various assignments of error, however, apparently we are also asked to review the question of error relating to the findings of guilt on the remaining three counts.

Billy Joe Schaffer, the accused, age 23, was reared in the city Ironton, Ohio. He was the product of a broken and dissolute family. At the age of 15, or thereabouts, he was sent by court order to the Boys Industrial School for the crime of theft. Thereafter, at the age of 16, he joined the Army by falsifying his age. Later, upon his release from the Army, he engages in various activities, one or several of which caused his confinement in a Colorado penitentiary, from which institution he later attained the status of a parol violator. In his wanderings through various states, he finally arrived, on February 20, 1958, in Ashland, Kentucky. On the next day, February 21, 1958, he crossed the Ohio River and proceeded to the home of his later victim, Mrs. Emma Remy, aged 75 years, the widow of a well-known Ironton doctor, who lived alone in the family homestead. Mrs. Remy was a former teacher in the public schools of Ironton, Ohio, and Billy Joe Schaffer had been one of her pupils.

From time to time, over a period of several years, the defendant had visited his former school teacher and had been the recipient of gifts of money and other favors. On the afternoon of February 21, 1958, Mrs. Remy answered his knock at her home, and they proceeded into the sitting room, where they engaged in conversation. He told her that he needed money for a certain purpose, and she replied by stating that he was not telling the truth, for she knew that he had been in prison. She thereupon reprimanded him for his conduct and suggested that he change his ways. An argument ensued, and Mrs. Remy charged the defendant with striking her, whereupon she ran up the stairway to a bedroom on the second floor of her home, with the defendant in pursuit. Here, apparently, an assault and battery occurred, as evidenced by her blood on a bed located therein. The defendant thereupon forced his victim from the room, and attempted to take her downstairs. She temporarily escaped and ran to a window in her back bedroom, where she knocked and screamed in an attempt to secure help.

The state's brief states correctly the following facts, in connection with this event, in this language:

'At that time, two young ladies were walking past the house enroute home from high school. They were walking on the same side of the street as the house, and as they were about at the middle of the house and in the process of passing, they heard the noise at the upstairs window. At first they paid no particular attention, but the noise continued as they walked toward the corner and they turned around and walked back to discover what it was. One of the ladies saw a hand in the window, and a face, and heard a cry but could not identify the face nor understand the cry. It was seen, however, in the lower pane of window glass, which, by reason of the nature of the window being a low-sill-type old-fashioned window would establish that the victim was near the floor if not on her hands and knees. The ladies, not understanding that there was trouble, continued along the street enroute home.'

The defendant admitted that he pulled Mrs. Remy from the window, as well as from the bed, where a quantity of her blood was later discovered. He then forced her down the stairway, and, in the course of the struggle, he strangled her with his hands with such force and violence as to cause her death.

The force applied in perpetrating this homicide is, in part, evidenced by the testimony of the coroner in stating his observations of 'hemorrhage and evidence of trauma to the neck area just behind the throat; two separate fractures of the hyoid bone (a small bone at the base of the tongue), indicating 'extreme trauma to that area'; 'hemorrhage into the esophagus behind the trachea in front of the vertebral bone,' and evidence of 'external trauma or great pressure exerted on the trachea or windpipe.'

The defendant, after killing his victim, sought to dispose of the body. He took the corpse to a wooden stairway leading from a downstairs room to the cellar, and, after placing it on the steps about half way to the basement, he saturated inflammable material under the stairs with fluid from his cigarette lighter and set it on fire. Prior to the start of the arson, however, and after the killing, he had searched the house for money. After starting the fire he escaped by taxicab to Kentucky, and from there to a western state, where he was later captured.

Firemen, who responded to an alarm, found and removed the badly-burned body of Mrs. Remy before extinguishing the fire.

The above statement of facts is supported by the direct testimony of witnesses, the admissions of the defendant, and reasonable inferences to be drawn therefrom, although some statements made by the accused are in conflict.

In the 8th assignment of error, it is claimed that:

'* * * there is not one iota or scintilla of evidence pertaining to premeditation or deliberation of any kind whatsoever in the record, and the state failed to prove by evidence beyond a reasonable doubt the corpus delicti.'

Whatever difficulty there may be in analyzing facts to determine whether there be sufficient evidence of premeditation and deliberation, there is no difficulty in stating the law upon the subject.

In State v. Ross, 92 Ohio App. 29, at page 42, 108 N.E.2d 77, at page 85, the law is declared as follows:

'It has been the law of this State for more than one hundred years, that if a person has actually formed the purpose to maliciously kill another, and deliberated and premeditated upon it before he performed the act of killing, he is guilty of murder in the first degree, however short the time may have been between the purpose and the execution. It is not the time of deliberation and premeditation that is requisite, but the actual existence of the purpose, malice, deliberation and premeditation, and it matters not how short the time, if the party has actually turned it over in his mind, weighed and deliberated upon it. It makes no difference whether the deliberation was in forming the design maliciously to kill, or, in the continuance of such design after being formed, until the same was executed. * * *'

In State v. Maranda, 94 Ohio St. 364, 114 N.E. 1038, the court states:

'1. By the corpus delicti of a crime is meant the body or substance of the crime, included in which are usually two elements: 1. The act. 2. The criminal agency of the act.

'2. It has long been established as a general rule in Ohio...