Anderson v. The State
| Decision Date | 20 April 1897 |
| Docket Number | 18,062 |
| Citation | 46 N.E. 901,147 Ind. 445 |
| Parties | Anderson et al. v. The State |
| Court | Indiana Supreme Court |
From the DeKalb Circuit Court.
Affirmed.
S. A Wood, D. M. Link and F. S. Roby, for appellants.
William A. Ketcham, Attorney-General; Merrill Moores, A. E. Davis, J E. Rose and F. L. Welschmer, for State.
The appellants were indicted as "Charles Reynolds, whose true name is unknown, William Anderson, whose true name is unknown, and Joseph Gaylor, whose true name is unknown." As said in the brief of their counsel, they "were at the time of their arrest 'tramps' without visible occupation." Counsel also intimate that the prosecuting witness was himself a tramp, and that the matters charged against appellants were simply the result of a drunken quarrel among the tramps, being the prosecuting witness, the appellants, and three others who escaped arrest. Counsel for the State advance quite a different theory and point to evidence in the record which supports the allegations made in the indictment.
The indictment is in two counts. The first charges that on the 1st day of April, 1896, at the county and State named, the appellants did unlawfully, feloniously, willfully maliciously and with premeditated malice, in a rude, insolent and angry manner, touch, beat, strike, wound, injure, and with great violence throw from a rapidly moving railroad train, one Theodore Beilstin, the prosecuting witness, with intent to murder the said Beilstin. The second count makes the same general charge against appellants, except that it is alleged that the acts done were with the intent to commit robbery and grand larceny.
The only error assigned is that the court overruled the motion for a new trial. The evidence is first reviewed by counsel for appellants with the purpose of showing that it was not sufficient to support the verdict. The evidence of the prosecuting witness certainly does support the verdict, and while he is not, perhaps, shown to be himself a paragon of virtue. we see no reason to hold his evidence incompetent. The verdict is also supported by other competent evidence introduced by the State.
It would appear that the six tramps, together with the prosecuting witness, whether he was also a tramp or not, took passage on the "blind platform" of a baggage car, between that and an express car, on a Baltimore and Ohio passenger train, as the same started west from Garrett City. There is evidence to show that after the train had attained a speed of from forty to fifty miles an hour the tramps attacked the prosecuting witness, first robbing him and then pitching him headlong from the platform; that he alighted on his feet and went back to Garrett, where he caused a telegram to be sent to Bremen for the arrest of his assailants; and that, after a severe struggle, three of the tramps, being these appellants, were arrested at Bremen, and were afterwards duly tried and convicted. Anderson was sentenced to a fine and imprisonment for two years, and the remaining appellants to a fine and imprisonment for five years.
Counsel find much fault with certain statements made to the jury by the prosecuting attorney. These statements had reference chiefly to the character of appellants as shown in the evidence,--that they went under various names, beat their way over the country, drifted about without having lived long enough in any community to have formed a reputation, and others of a like character.
The evidence did show the men to be of the character and history indicated; and while it may not be a crime to be a tramp, and while it is a sad commentary upon our civilization that men should be tramps, yet we are unable to see why the evidence which showed the men to be tramps might not be properly commented upon. The previous life, habits, and surroundings of a man charged with a crime, may always be shown for the purpose of enabling the jury the better to apply the evidence to the case in hand. Some indiscreet zeal may, perhaps, have been displayed by the officer of the State in characterizing the unfortunate men before him, but the freedom of counsel in presenting a case to the jury as shown in the evidence must not be unduly circumscribed. The court did admonish the jury not to consider certain of the more intemperate language of the prosecuting attorney; and, the giving to the jury of almost all the instructions asked for by the appellants, as well as the giving of other instructions, secured, as we think, a fair consideration of all the evidence adduced on the trial. See Coleman v. State, 111 Ind. 563, 13 N.E. 100.
In the course of his argument to the jury, the prosecutor used this language: "Gentlemen, the weaker the case a defendant has, in a criminal case, the harder they cry reasonable doubt."
Of this, counsel say: "When the jury retired they had before them for consideration as one of the elements upon which to make up their verdict the fact, as thus stated, that the rule of reasonable doubt was an indication, when invoked, of guilt."
While the statement was objectionable, as tending to discredit a rule of law,--a rule by which the law throws as a shield over every person charged with crime until evidence is adduced sufficient to...
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