Boyd v. State

• Decision Date: 20 May 1904
• Citation: 84 Miss. 414,36 So. 525
• Court: Mississippi Supreme Court
• Parties: YOUNG B. BOYD v. STATE OF MISSISSIPPI

36 So. 525

84 Miss. 414

YOUNG B. BOYD v. STATE OF MISSISSIPPI

Supreme Court of Mississippi

May 20, 1904

FROM the circuit court of Copiah county. HON. ROBERT POWELL Judge.

Boyd appellant, was tried and convicted of murder by poisoning his wife, and appealed to the supreme court. The opinion states the case.

Reversed and remanded.

M. S McNeil, and A. C. McNair, for appellant.

The evidence is not sufficient to sustain a conviction. There is nothing in the testimony, in the first place, to show, beyond a reasonable doubt, that the good woman died of poison. But if that was shown, it is not shown that Boyd was the criminal agent. The testimony of those conversant with the true inwardness of the relation between Boyd and his wife discloses that Boyd's conduct and treatment of his wife was kind. In this case no outbreaks of abuse and quarreling are displayed. While it is not proved, the fact, if it be a fact, that he may have been infatuated with Mrs. Artman is not a sufficient motive, on the showing in his case, for the poisoning of his wife. Neither is the fact that there was a life policy on the life of Mrs. Boyd, in his favor, for $ 1,000, sufficient. All such testimony only tended to inflame and mislead the jury, and was under the facts in this case highly prejudicial to the defendant. The testimony of the witnesses as to the conduct and relations of Boyd and Mrs. Artman was admitted to show motive on part of Boyd for poisoning his wife. This is true, too, as to the orange, and the policy of insurance on her life in Boyd's favor. This testimony was wholly inadmissible on this line, and was highly hurtful to defendant. The test as to the admissibility of evidence to show motive is: "Does the testimony fairly tend to raise an inference in favor of the fact proposed to be proved?" If it does, it is admissible; otherwise, it is not. 15 Am. & Eng. Ency. Law (1st ed.), 93.

The alleged dying declaration was inadmissible. It consisted partly of the statement of Dr. Dampeer that the deceased was suffering from a poison, and that her husband was suspected of administering the poison to her. Dying declarations are the statements of the party dying, and not of some one else. Dampeer's statement that she was suffering from a poison was an opinion of his, an assumption of one of the vital facts in the case, and in connection with his statement, that her husband was suspected of poisoning her, largely contributed to, if it did not procure, the conviction. The statement of Mrs. Boyd in response to Dr. Dampeer's suggestion that she was poisoned by her husband, that "the Lord was her witness that she had taken nothing except what you have given me," was not in the nature of a dying declaration. But if it were, the circumstance attending it rendered it inadmissible. Its only tendency and effect was to prejudice the defendant's case in the minds of the jury. If the appeal depended on this alone, the case should be reversed.

William Williams, attorney-general, R. N. Miller, and R. B. Mayes, for appellee.

Looking at the assignments of error by appellant, it seems they are all purely formal and do not indicate any particular point relied on. We deem it unnecessary to notice but two of them; the first is as to the admissibility of the evidence as to Boyd's intimacy with Mrs. Artman, and also Mrs. Boyd's jealousy. To show motive, which is one link (not necessary, it is true), but always a proper link when it can be established, and an important one in every case of circumstantial evidence, in this kind of case, to show motive for murder, it is always admissible to show relations of the parties; and in order to do this the evidence of hostile relations with his wife on Boyd's part was proper. It was also proper to show his fondness for the Artman woman, between himself and whom stood his wife, and that he would be anxious for her removal on this account. The following citations of case law on this subject are deemed sufficient--viz.: Webb v. State, 73 Miss. 456; Weyrich v. People, 89 Ill. 98; People v. Scott, 153 N.Y. 46; State v. Duestrow, 137 Me. 266; State v. Chase, 68 Vt. 405; Brunson v. State, 124 Ala. 37; Fraser v. State, 55 Ga. 325 (112 Mich. 291); Underhill Cr. Ev., secs. 90 and 323; State v. Seymore, 94 Iowa 699; Phillips v. State, 62 Ark. 119; Painter v. People, 147 Ill. 444; People v. Colvin, 118 Cal. 349; People v. Buchanan, 145 N.Y. 1; Boyle v. State, 61 Wis. 441; Siberry v. State, 149 Ind. 684; Thiede v. Utah Ter., 159 U.S. 510; People v. Decker, 157 N.Y. 186; Underhill Cr. Ev., sec. 333; Spears v. State, 56 S.W. R., 347; State v. Reid, 50 La. 990 (24 S.W. R., 131); State v. Larkin, 11 Nev. 314; Cue v. Com., 78 Pa. St., 185; People v. Benham, 160 N.Y. 402 (55 N. E. R., 11); Cr. Law & Pro., by Hughes, secs 138 to 142; Miller v. State, 68 Miss. 221; State v. Reed, 53 Kan. 767 (42 Am. St. R., 323); State v. Watkins, 9 Conn. 47 (21 Am. Dec., 712). This last leading case on very point.

Second, as to the dying declarations of Mrs. Boyd. A dying declaration is the "statement of the victim of crime of any circumstance, which, if the party were living, would be relevant and admissible on the issue as to the cause or manner of such victim's death." We need cite only the case of Lipscomb v. State, 75 Miss. 559, in support of this definition and of the admissibility of Mrs. Boyd's declaration.

All the preliminaries were shown--that is, that she was fully conscious of impending, immediate dissolution, had so stated, that she was going to die, and had made all her dispositions to that solemn end, and she then said: "As the Lord is my witness, I took nothing except what you (the doctor) gave me."

This was the expression not of a mere opinion, but of a relevant fact. Boyd's defense hinted at in his conversation with Dr. Dampeer was suicide, and of course it was a very pertinent fact to know if she had taken poison voluntarily. If she had not died and Boyd were on trial for assault and battery with intent to murder by giving her poison, of course it would have been relevant and proper to ask her if she had herself taken poison. This is the test as held in the Lipscomb case, supra. She was told Boyd was suspected of her murder, and asked to exonerate him if she had taken poison voluntarily, and her testimony in the form of dying declaration was entirely proper.

Argued orally by A. C. McNair, and M. S. McNeil, for appellant, and by R. N. Miller, and William Williams, attorney-general, for the appellee.

OPINION

TRULY, J.

On the night of the 29th of November, 1902, Mrs. Annie Boyd died of acute gastritis. An autopsy disclosed the fact, according to the testimony of the analytical chemist, that her death was superinduced by arsenical poisoning. Appellant, the husband of the deceased, was indicted for her murder, and upon trial was convicted, sentenced to the penitentiary for life, and from that judgment prosecutes this appeal.

The testimony adduced at the trial was purely circumstantial. The theory upon which the prosecution proceeded was that the appellant had poisoned his wife through a desire to effect her death so that he might procure the proceeds of a policy of insurance on her life and continue an illicit intimacy with one Susan Artman. The following state of facts was developed by the testimony: Boyd was a candymaker, conducting a candy and fruit stand. His household consisted of himself his wife, and one small child, and a cousin of his wife, a schoolgirl some sixteen years old, named Nora McDaniel. The family occupied rooms adjoining Boyd's fruit stand. Artman and his wife, Susan, lived in an adjoining building, where the husband conducted a bakery. The rear premises of each house was in a yard common to both. Boyd and Susan Artman soon became friendly, and in constant conversation, Boyd devoting considerable attention to her, to the exclusion to some extent of his wife, though the testimony failed to positively disclose any criminality in this intimacy. Mrs. Boyd was much distressed, and brooded over this intimacy, and intimated on several occasions that she contemplated suicide. Nora McDaniel testified that when she returned from school on Monday preceding the Saturday night on which Mrs. Boyd died she found Mrs. Boyd sick from nausea, vomiting incessantly, and seemingly in intense pain. A doctor was called in, prescribed several remedies, which were continued during the week and until her death. After this spell on Monday, Mrs. Boyd seemed to rally, and on Thursday was so much better that she was able to be out of bed. On Friday morning she suffered a relapse, and from that time until her death lingered in constant and excruciating pain. During the course of the treatment of the case the attendant physician prescribed several different medicines, which were administered generally by Miss McDaniel, though occasionally by the doctor and by Boyd himself. None of these prescriptions, if correctly compounded, contained poison in any form. For some time prior to the attack on Monday, Mrs. Boyd had been taking another medicine for dyspepsia, from which she was a sufferer. On Friday before Mrs. Boyd's death, the appellant asked the attending physician if he did not think his wife had been poisoned; that he (appellant) suspected that she had taken poison on account of jealousy of Susan Artman. Shortly after the death, while appellant was in the room, sitting on the bed with his dead wife, he was arrested, and carried to another place, where he remained under guard. While under arrest he inquired of the officer who had him in charge for what he was being held. The officer replied for the poisoning of his wife, whereupon the appellant remarked that he suspected that his wife was poisoned even before the doctor had discovered it. It...