People v. Schmidt

• Decision Date: 23 November 1915
• Citation: 216 N.Y. 324,110 N.E. 945
• Parties: PEOPLE, v. SCHMIDT.
• Court: New York Court of Appeals Court of Appeals

216 N.Y. 324

110 N.E. 945

PEOPLE,

v.SCHMIDT.

Court of Appeals of New York.

Nov. 23, 1915.

Appeal from Supreme Court, Trial Term, New York County.

Hans Schmidt was convicted of murder in the first degree, and he appeals. Affirmed.

Alphonse G. Koelble, of New York City, for appellant.

Charles A. Perkins, Dist. Att., of New York City (Robert C. Taylor, of New York City, of counsel), for the People.

CARDOZO.

In September, 1913, the dismembered body of Anna Aumuller was found in the Hudson river. Suspicion pointed to the defendant. He was arrested, and confessed that he had killed the women by cutting her throat with a knife. He repeated this confession again and again. He attempted, however, to escape the penalty for murder by the plea that he was insane. He told the physicians who examined him that he had heard the voice of God calling upon him to kill the woman as a sacrifice and atonement. He confessed to a life of unspeakable excesses and hideous crimes, broken, he said, by spells of religious ecstacy and exaltation. In one of these moments, believing himself, he tells us, in the visible presence of God, he committed this fearful crime. Two physicians of experience, accepting as true his statement that he was overpowered by this delusion, expressed the opinion that he was insane. Other physicians of experience held the view that his delusion was feigned, and his insanity a sham. The jury accepted this latter view, and by their verdict found him guilty of murder in the first degree.

[1] The defendant was condemned to death in February, 1914. In July, 1914, he made a motion for a new trial on the ground of newly discovered evidence. In his affidavit, upon that motion, he tells a most extraordinary tale. He now says that he did not murder Anna Aumuller, and that his confession of guilt was false. He says that she died from a criminal operation, and that to conceal the abortion, to which he and others were parties, he hacked the dead body to pieces, and cast the fragments in the river. His crime, he now says, was not murder, but manslaughter. He tells us why he chose to charge himself with the graver offense. He believed that he could feign insanity successfully, and that after a brief term in an asylum he would again be set at large. To confess to the abortion would implicate his confederates, and bring certain punishment to every one. To confess to murder, but at the same time feign insanity, might permit every one to go free. the compact was then made, he says, between himself and his confederates, that he would protect them from suspicion, and play the madman himself. The men and the women who are said to have been the confederates deny that such a compact was made. Whether they were parties or not the fraud upon the court is of little moment at this time; in any event, the defendant now tells us that he was sane; that the tale which he told the physicians, the tale of monstrous perversions and delusions, was false; and that he did not hear the divine voice calling him to sacrifice and to slay. He asks that he be given another opportunity to put before a jury the true narrative of the crime.

There is no power in any court to grant a new trial upon that ground. The statute says that a new trial may be granted “where it is made to appear, by affidavit, that upon another trial the defendant can produce evidence such as, if before received, would probably have changed the verdict; if such evidence has been discovered since the trial, is not cumulative; and the failure to produce it on the trial was not owing to want of diligence.” Code Crim.Pro. § 465, subd. 7. The power to order a new trial in criminal causes is created and measured by the statute. People ex rel. Jerome v. Court of Gen'l Sessions, 112 App.Div. 424, 98 N.Y. Supp.557;Id., 185 N.Y. 504, 78 N.E. 149;People v. Hovey, 30 Hun, 354; Id., 93 N.Y. 651; Id., 1 N.Y.Cr.R. 477, 479; Quimbo Appo v. People, 20 N.Y. 531. The defense now offered by the defendant was not “discovered since the trial.” It was known to him, on his own showing, from the beginning. He chose to withhold it, because he had faith in his ability to deceive the courts of justice. We do not attempt to determine how much of his present tale is true. Even if the entire tale is true, the courts are powerless to help him. A criminal may not experiment with one defense, and then when it fails him, invoke the aid of the law which he has flouted, to experiment with another defense, held in reserve for that emergency. It would be strange if any system of law were thus to invite contempt of its authority. The statute withholds that power from us, if we were otherwise disposed to exercise it. Code Crim.Pro. § 465, subd. 7. The remedy and the one remedy available to a criminal who finds himself thus enmeshed in a trap of his own making, is not in the processes of courts or the machinery of law; it is by appeal to the clemency of the Governor. Strange to say, with all its incongruous features, the defendant's tale supplies a plausible explanation of some of the mysteries of this tragedy. We do not mean to express a belief that the tale is true. All that we say is that in an appropriate proceeding it would merit earnest scrutiny. We do not doubt that such scrutiny will be given to it, and that right will be done, if hereafter an appeal for clemency is made to the executive.

[2] The defendant shifts his ground, however, and insists that even though his motion for a new trial was properly denied, we must none the less reverse the judgment for error in the charge. The error is said to have been committed in the definition of the degree of insanity that relieves from responsibility for crime. The rule of our statute is that:

“A person is not excused from criminal liability as an idiot, imbecile, lunatic or insane person, except upon proof that, at the time of committing the alleged criminal act, he was laboring under such a defect of reason as:(1) Not to know the nature and quality of the act he was doing; or (2) not to know that the act was wrong.” Penal Law, § 1120.

The learned trial judge said to the jury that “wrong” in this definition means “contrary to the law of the state.” The jury was instructed in pointed and impressive terms, that even if the defendant believed in good faith that God had appeared to him and commanded the sacrifice of Anna Aumuller, and this belief was a delusion, the result of a defect of reason, the defendant must none the less answer to the law if he knew the nature and quality of the act, and knew that it was wrong, in the sense that it was forbidden by the law of the state. We think that is the fair meaning of the whole charge as the jury must have understood it. For brevity, we quote its substance rather than its exact language. It is true that adopting with a proviso a request of the defendant's counsel, the court did say that:

“If the jury believe that at the time of the commission of the act, the defendant was completely obsessed by the delusion that he was acting under a divine command and that every other thought was excluded from his mind at the time, they must acquit the defendant, provided that the jury are satisfied that at the time he committed that act he was laboring under such a defect of reason as either not to know the nature and quality of the act he was committing or that it was wrong.”

This left the meaning of the word “wrong” still obscure, and the judge had already told the jury that it meant an offense against the law of the state. If, however, the jury could have supposed that he intended to modify his previous instructions, that belief must have been dispelled by the instructions that immediately followed. The counsel for the people said: “The only matter I would ask your honor to charge again to the jury is based on the last request of the defendant, that the term ‘wrong’ as used in your Honor's charge, means ‘wrong according to the law of the state of New York.’ ” And to this the court responded: “I so charge you, gentlemen.” The defendant saved his rights by appropriate exceptions.

We are unable to accept the view that the word “wrong” in the statutory definition is to receive so narrow a construction. We must interpret the rule in the light of its history. That history has been often sketched. In the beginning of our law the madman charged with murder was not acquitted. A special verdict was given that he was mad, and then the king pardoned him. Stephen, History Criminal Law, vol. 2, p. 151; Pollock & Maitland's History of Law, vol. 2, p. 478; 3 Holdsworth, History English Law, 395, 396. There was the same need of the royal pardon for homicide by misadventure or in self-defense Stephen, supra.

“The man who commits homicide by misadventure or self-defense deserves but needs a pardon.” Pollock & Maitland's History of Law, vol. 2, p. 477.

“If the justices have before them a man who, as a verdict declares, has done a deed of this kind, they do not acquit him, nor can they pardon him, they bid him hope for the king's mercy.” Ibid. p. 477.

Then came the age of what has become known as the “wild beast test.” The law of that age and of later days has been adequately stated by Judge Doe in State v. Pike, 49 N.H. 399, 6 Am.Rep. 533, and by Judge Ladd, writing for the same court, in State v. Jones, 50 N.H. 369, Am.Rep. 242.

“The defendant was not excused unless he was totally deprived of his reason, understanding and memory, and did not know what he was doing any more than a wild beast.” Arnold's Case, 16 Howell's State rials, 764.

As late as 1800, in Hadfield's Case, 27 St.Tr. 1288, that test was announced as law. The first departure from the ancient rule came in 1812. Parke's Case, Collinson on Lunacy, p. 477, Broler's Case, Id. p. 673; Bellingham's Case, Id. p. 636. The capacity to distinguish right from wrong was then put forward as another test. As propounded in these cases, it meant a capacity to distinguish right from wrong, not...