Com. v. Carroll

• Decision Date: 12 November 1963
• Parties: COMMONWEALTH of Pennsylvania v. Donald D. CARROLL, Jr., Appellant.
• Court: Pennsylvania Supreme Court

Page 911

194 A.2d 911 412 Pa. 525 COMMONWEALTH of Pennsylvania
v.
Donald D. CARROLL, Jr., Appellant. Supreme Court of Pennsylvania. Nov. 12, 1963.

[412 Pa. 527]

Page 913

M. Barney Cohen, Harold Gondelman, Pittsburgh, for appellant.

Edward C. Boyle, Dist. Atty., George Ross, William Claney Smith, Asst. Dist. Attys., Pittsburgh, for appellee.

[412 Pa. 526] Before BELL, C. J., and MUSMANNO, JONES, COHEN, EAGEN, O'BRIEN and ROBERTS, JJ.

[412 Pa. 527] BELL, Chief Justice.

The defendant, Carroll, pleaded guilty generally to an indictment charging him with the murder of his wife, and was tried by a Judge without a jury in the Court of Oyer and Terminer of Allegheny County. That Court found him guilty of first degree murder and sentenced him to life imprisonment. Following argument and denial of motions in arrest of judgment and for a new trial, defendant took this appeal. The only questions involved are thus stated by the appellant:

(1) 'Does not the evidence sustain a conviction no higher than murder in the second degree?

(2) 'Does not the evidence of defendant's good character, together with the testimony of medical experts, including the psychiatrist for the Behavior Clinic of Allegheny County, that the homicide was not premeditated or intentional, require ¹ the Court below [412 Pa. 528] to fix the degree of guilt of defendant no higher than murder in the second degree?'

The defendant married the deceased in 1955, when he was serving in the Army in California. Subsequently he was stationed in Alabama, and later in Greenland. During the latter tour of duty, defendant's wife and two children lived with his parents in New Jersey. Because this arrangement proved incompatible, defendant returned to the United States on emergency leave in order to move his family to their own quarters. On his wife's insistence, defendant was forced first to secure a 'compassionate transfer' back to the States, and subsequently to resign from the Army in July of 1960, by which time he had attained the rank of Chief Warrant Officer. Defendant was a hard worker, earned a substantial salary and bore a very good reputation among his neighbors.

In 1958, decedent-wife suffered a fractured skull while attempting to leave defendant's car in the course of an argument. Allegedly this contributed to her mental disorder which was later diagnosed as a schizoid personality type. In 1959 she underwent psychiatric treatment at the Mental Hygiene Clinic in Aberdeen, Maryland. She complained of nervousness and told the examining doctor 'I feel like hurting my children.' This sentiment sometimes took the form of sadistic 'discipline' toward their very young children. Nevertheless, upon her discharge from the Clinic, the doctors considered her much improved. With this background we come to the immediate events of the crime.

In January, 1962, defendant was selected to attend an electronics school in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, for nine days. His wife greeted this news with violent argument. Immediately prior to his departure for Winston-Salem, at the suggestion and request of his wife, he put a loaded .22 calibre pistol on the [412 Pa. 529] window sill at the head of their common bed, so that she would feel safe. On the evening of January 16, 1962, defendant returned home and told his wife that he had been temporarily assigned to teach at a school in Chambersburg, which would necessitate his absence from home four nights out of seven for a ten

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week period. A violent and protracted argument ensued at the dinner table and continued until four o'clock in the morning.

Defendant's own statement after his arrest details the final moments before the crime: 'We went into the bedroom a little before 3 o'clock on Wednesday morning where we continued to argue in short bursts. Generally she laid with her back to me facing the wall in bed and would just talk over her shoulder to me. I became angry and more angry especially what she was saying about my kids and myself, and sometime between 3 and 4 o'clock in the morning I remembered the gun on the window sill over my head. I think she had dozed off. I reached up and grabbed the pistol and brought it down and shot her twice in the back of the head.' ²

Defendant's testimony at the trial elaborated this theme. He started to think about the children, 'seeing my older son's feet what happened to them. I could see the bruises on him and Michael's chin was split open, four stitches. I didn't know what to do. I wanted to help my boys. Sometime in there she said something in there, she called me some kind of name. I kept thinking of this. During this time I either thought or felt--I thought of the gun, just thought of the gun. I am not sure whether I felt my hand move toward the gun--I saw my hand move, the next thing--the only thing I can recollect after that is right after [412 Pa. 530] the shots or right during the shots I saw the gun in my hand just pointed at my wife's head. She was still lying on her back--I mean her side. I could smell the gunpowder and I could hear something--it sounded like running water. I didn't know what it was at first, didn't realize what I'd done at first. Then I smelled it. I smelled blood before. * * *'

'Q. At the time you shot her, Donald, were you fully aware and intend to do what you did?

'A. I don't know positively. All I remember hearing was two shots and feeling myself go cold all of a sudden.'

Shortly thereafter defendant wrapped his wife's body in a blanket, spread and sheets, tied them on with a piece of plastic clothesline and took her down to the cellar. He tried to clean up as well as he could. That night he took his wife's body, wrapped in a blanket with a rug over it to a desolate place near a trash dump. He then took the children to his parents' home in Magnolia, New Jersey. He was arrested the next Monday in Chambersburg where he had gone to his teaching assignment.

Although defendant's brief is voluminous, the narrow and only questions which he raises on this appeal are as hereinbefore quoted. Both are embodied in...