Warmke v. Commonwealth
| Decision Date | 26 May 1944 |
| Citation | 297 Ky. 649,180 S.W.2d 872 |
| Parties | WARMKE v. COMMONWEALTH. |
| Court | Kentucky Court of Appeals |
Appeal from Circuit Court, Breckenridge County; George K. Holbert Judge.
Jesse Iva Pate Warmke was convicted of manslaughter, and she appeals.
Affirmed.
J. R. Eskridge, of Hardinsburg, and W. W. Kirtley of Owensboro, for appellant.
Hubert Meredith, Atty. Gen., for appellee.
This appeal is from a manslaughter sentence of nine years imposed on the appellant in connection with the death of her infant child. The sole ground urged for reversal was that the corpus delicti was not sufficiently shown.
The appellant resided in Utica, a village in Davies County. Some weeks prior to July 8, 1943 she went to Louisville and there gave birth to an illegitimate child. On July 8, 1943 she traveled to Cloverport, in Breckenridge County, by bus arriving about 8 o'clock p.m. It was raining very hard and she went into a drug store for shelter. A. T. Couch, an employee of the store, loaned her a coat in which to wrap her baby. She went out leaving her suitcase in the store. She called Couch by telephone about 10:30, requesting him to come to the store so that she might got her suitcase. When she met Couch at the store she did not have the baby but returned the borrowed coat. Early the next morning she went to the home of a kinswoman, Mrs. Pate. The town marshal, having learned that the baby was missing, went to Mrs. Pate's home and questioned the appellant. She told him that after she left the drug store she started to cross a railroad trestle near the town in an effort to get to the home of a friend and that while she was crossing a train approached and she crawled over on the edge of the ties and accidently dropped the baby. The town marshal and a highway patrolman then took the appellant to the trestle and she pointed out where the baby had been dropped. There was a creek under the trestle at this point. It was flooded and the current was swift. A baby's cap was found on the bank of the creek and the appellant exclaimed, 'There is my little baby's cap'. The baby's body was never found.
When the officers returned to town with the appellant she told them, after some questioning, that she purposely threw the baby into the creek because she was unable to face the humiliation of going home with an illegitimate child.
On the trial she repudiated the confession she had made to the officers and testified that she dropped the baby accidentally, in the manner she first told the officers. She testified that she was scared and excited and didn't remember saying she dropped the baby purposely. She said that after she dropped the baby she wandered around all night barefooted and in a dazed condition and that in the morning she put on her shoes and stockings and went to Mrs Pate's. She gave as a reason for stopping off at Cloverport that it was her father's home town and that she desired to talk to a friend, Mrs. Atwill, and obtain advice. She did not see Mrs. Atwill but says that she was looking for her house when she dropped the baby and that thereafter she remembered nothing until early morning.
It is axiomatic that the corpus delicti must be shown. This term means the body of the offense, the substance of the crime. Proof of the corpus delicti in homicide cases involves two principal facts, namely, that the person is dead and that he died as a result of the injury alleged to have been received. In short, there must be proof of a death and proof that such death was caused by the criminal agency of the accused. Higgins v. Com. 142 Ky. 647, 134 S.W. 1135; 13 R.C.L. 730.
But the law does not subscribe to the rigid formula that the body must be found or seen after death. The death may be established by circumstantial evidence. 26 Amer.Juris. 376. As said in 13 R.C.L. 737, the death may be shown ...
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