State v. Blunt

• Decision Date: 16 May 1887
• Citation: 4 S.W. 394,91 Mo. 503
• Parties: STATE v. BLUNT.
• Court: Missouri Supreme Court

4 S.W. 394

91 Mo. 503

STATE v. BLUNT.

Supreme Court of Missouri.

May 16, 1887.

1. HOMICIDE — EVIDENCE — THREATS.

On the trial of defendant for the murder of his wife, a witness was asked by defendant's counsel if he ever heard any one speak to deceased "about her having acted foolishly in marrying a cripple" like defendant. Held that, if the question was intended to prove threats by the deceased against defendant, it was not in the proper form, and should be excluded; and, if it was not intended to show threats, it was irrelevant and inadmissible.

2. SAME — MURDER OR MANSLAUGHTER — INSTRUCTIONS.

On a trial for murder, where the evidence for the state tended to prove murder in the first degree, but the defendant testified in his own behalf that he and his wife (the deceased) had been quarreling, and that, when they entered his house, she threatened him, and cut at him with a razor which he took from her and cut her with three times, causing her death, an instruction that, if the jury believed his evidence, they should find him guilty of manslaughter in the second degree, held proper.

3. CRIMINAL LAW — INSTRUCTIONS — REASONABLE DOUBT.

In a trial for murder, an instruction, "to authorize an acquittal on the ground of reasonable doubt alone, such doubt should be a real, substantial, well-founded doubt, arising out of the evidence in the cause, and not a mere possibility that the defendant is innocent," held not ground for reversal.

Appeal from St. Louis criminal court.

Atty. Gen. Boone, for respondent. J. L. Hornsby, for appellant.

NORTON, C. J.

Defendant on the ninth of December, 1886, was tried in the St. Louis criminal court, and convicted of murder in the first degree, for killing his wife, Mary Blunt, from which judgment he has appealed to this court, and assigns for error the action of the court in refusing to admit certain evidence offered, and in the matter of giving instructions.

During the progress of the trial a witness was asked by counsel for defendant the following question: "Did you ever hear any one speak to Mary about her having acted foolishly in marrying a cripple like Blunt?" The state interposed an objection to the question, which the court sustained; and this is the only complaint made as to the action of the court in rejecting evidence; and it is not well founded, inasmuch as it has no bearing on the questions in issue in the case. If the object of the questioner was to prove threats on the part of the deceased against the accused, the question should have been so framed; and, had the court then refused to allow it to be answered, the case of State v. Elkins, 63 Mo. 159, to which we have been cited, would have applied.

The jury were told in an instruction, that "to authorize an acquittal on the ground of reasonable doubt alone, such doubt should be a real, substantial, well-founded doubt, arising out of the evidence in the cause, and not a mere possibility that the defendant is innocent." We have been cited to the case of State v. Owens, 79 Mo. 619, as condemning the above instruction because of the use of the word "real." It is sufficient to say of that case that in the recent cases of State v. Jones, 86 Mo. 627, and State v. Payton, 2 S. W. Rep. 394, it is held that the use of the word "real" in such an instruction was not reversible error. In the case last above cited, the case of State v. Owens, supra, is referred to, and it is...