Aszman v. State
| Decision Date | 22 April 1890 |
| Docket Number | 15,473 |
| Parties | Aszman v. The State |
| Court | Indiana Supreme Court |
From the Marion Criminal Court.
J. S Duncan and C. W. Smith, for appellant.
L. T Michener, Attorney General, J. L. Mitchell, Prosecuting Attorney, and J. H. Gillett, for the State.
The grand jury of Marion county presented, in an indictment duly returned into the criminal court, that Edward Aszman, on a day named, did feloniously, purposely, and with premeditated malice, kill and murder Bertha Elff, a human being. The defendant pleaded generally, "not guilty," and specially in writing, that he was of unsound mind when the offence was committed. He was convicted of murder in the first degree and sentenced to suffer death.
The homicide occurred on the evening of August 24th, 1889. There was evidence tending to show that the accused came from Chicago, where he had been at work for some weeks, to Indianapolis about twelve days before the homicide. There was also evidence tending to show that while at Chicago the accused exhibited some peculiarities of conduct which indicated that he was laboring under some mental delusion or hallucination, as for example, that he indulged the unfounded belief that he was being pursued by persons armed with long knives. It also appeared that he was addicted to the use of intoxicating drink. The State attributed all his peculiar conduct to a condition brought on by excessive indulgence in intoxicating drink; while on his behalf it was claimed that his conduct, coupled with the circumstances under which the homicide was committed, and the attempt of the accused to commit suicide, all indicated such a state of mental disorder as rendered him irresponsible, or at least incapable of deliberate thought, or rational determination. The accused seems to have maintained relations of intimacy with Bertha Elff, the victim of the homicide, to whose society he in some way laid claim to the exclusion of other men. The evidence tends to show that he had been drinking to excess during the day, and that while walking with the deceased during the evening, the subject of her receiving attentions from another man was under discussion. She denied the right of the accused to question her conduct in the respects mentioned, whereupon he inflicted a mortal wound upon her by cutting her across the throat with his knife, and then attempted to take his own life by inflicting a long, deep wound across his own throat with the knife. She was found dead from the wound inflicted, as stated above, in a few minutes afterwards, and he was found within fifty feet of her body in an unconscious condition, with a self-inflicted wound from which the evidence tends to show death would have ensued but for timely surgical aid. It is not claimed that there was any evidence tending to show that the accused had formed the design to take the life of the deceased prior to the evening on which the homicide occurred, and that he voluntarily became intoxicated in order to prepare himself for the execution of his premeditated and previously formed purpose. There was evidence to which an instruction relating to the mental condition of the accused, as affected by voluntary intoxication, at the time the homicidal act was committed, was applicable. The only instruction given by the court relating to that feature of the case was the following:
The thirteenth and fourteenth instructions asked by the accused are, in legal effect, the same. The fourteenth is as follows:
"While voluntary intoxication is no excuse or palliation for any crime actually committed, yet if upon the whole evidence in this cause you shall have such reasonable doubt whether at the time of the killing--if you shall find from the evidence accused did kill Bertha Elff--he had sufficient mental capacity to deliberately think upon and rationally to determine so to kill deceased, then you can not find him guilty of murder in the first degree, although such inability was the result of intoxication."
The propriety of the ruling of the court in refusing to give the thirteenth and fourteenth instructions, or either of them, is now before us for consideration.
Section 1904, R. S. 1881, reads as follows: "Whoever purposely and with premeditated malice, or in the perpetration of or attempt to perpetrate, any rape, arson, robbery, or burglary, or by administering poison or causing the same to be done, kills any human being, is guilty of murder in the first degree, and, upon conviction thereof," etc. Other sections define murder in the second degree, and declare what shall constitute voluntary and involuntary manslaughter.
The distinction between murder in the first degree and murder in the second degree has been so often stated and is so well understood that it would be useless repetition to reiterate it here. Fahnestock v. State, 23 Ind. 231; Binns v. State, 66 Ind. 428. McDermott v. State, 89 Ind. 187; Koerner v. State, 98 Ind. 7.
It is sufficient to say that in order that there may be such premeditated malice as will make a homicide murder in the first degree, the thought of taking life must have been consciously conceived in the mind; the conception must have been meditated upon, and a deliberate determination formed to do the act. Where a homicide has been preceded by a concurrence of will, with an intention to kill, and these are followed by deliberate thought or premeditation, although they follow as instantaneously as successive thoughts can follow each other, the perpetrator may be guilty of murder in the first degree. But as it is of the very essence of the crime that there should have been time and opportunity for deliberation or premeditation after the mind has consciously formed the design to take life, it follows as a necessary corollary that there must have been the mental capacity to think deliberately upon, and determine rationally in respect to the nature and consequences of the act which follows. It would be a legal as well as a logical incongruity to hold that the crime of murder in the first degree could only be committed after deliberate thought or premeditated malice, and yet that it might be committed by one who was without mental capacity to think deliberately or determine rationally.
As a matter of course the rule is universal that voluntary intoxication is no excuse for crime, nor does it in any degree mitigate or palliate an offence actually committed. To hold otherwise would unbridle crime and subvert public order. On the contrary, where there is reason to believe that one has conceived the design to commit a crime, and while harboring the unlawful purpose, voluntarily becomes intoxicated in order to blunt his moral sensibilities and nerve himself up to the execution of his preconceived design, the offence is thereby greatly aggravated. State v. Robinson, 20 W.Va. 713 (43 Am. Rep. 799).
Where however, the essence of a crime depends upon the intent with which an act was done, or where an essential ingredient of the crime consists in the doing of an unlawful act, with a deliberate and premeditated purpose, the mental condition of the accused, whether that condition be occasioned by voluntary intoxication or otherwise, is an important factor to be considered. Smith v. Commonwealth, 62 Ky. 224, 1 Duv. 224; State v. Garvey, 11 Minn. 154. Thus in Cline v. State, 43 Ohio St. 332, 1 N.E. 22, the learned judge, delivering the judgment of the court, said: Pigman v. State, 14 Ohio 555; Lytle v. State, 31 Ohio St. 196; Davis v. State, 25 Ohio St. 369; Roberts v. People, 19 Mich. 401; State v. Welch, 21 Minn. 22. In the application of this principle the Supreme Court of the United States reversed a judgment of conviction of murder in the first degree, in Hopt v. People, 104 U.S. 631, 26 L.Ed. 873. The court below instructed the jury to the effect that, The accused requested the court to give an instruction similar...
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