Com. v. Simmons
| Decision Date | 11 January 1949 |
| Citation | 65 A.2d 353,361 Pa. 391 |
| Parties | Commonwealth v. Simmons, Appellant |
| Court | Pennsylvania Supreme Court |
Argued November 8, 1948
Appeal, No. 189, Jan. T., 1948, from judgment of Oyer and Terminer, Adams Co., April Sessions, 1947, No. 5, in case of Commonwealth v. Ray H. Simmons. Judgment and sentence affirmed; rearguments refused April 22, 1949 and July 20 1949.
Indictment charging defendant with murder. Before SHEELY, P.J.
Verdict of guilty with death penalty and judgment of sentence entered thereon. Defendant appealed.
Judgment and sentence affirmed.
Thomas D. Caldwell, with him Richard A. Brown, Maurice Yoffee, Swope, Brown & Swope and Caldwell, Fox & Stoner, for appellant.
Carl B. Shelley, with him Daniel E. Teeter, District Attorney, and J. Francis Yake, Jr., for appellee.
Before MAXEY, C.J., DREW, LINN, STERN, PATTERSON, STEARNE and JONES, JJ.
A jury found defendant guilty of murder in the first degree and imposed the penalty of death. On this appeal there are 45 assignments of error; many of them, however, are trivial and so obviously lacking in merit as not to require discussion.
Defendant is a young man 25 years of age. A psychiatrist testified that he was in the "dull, normal group" with an intelligence age of 14 to 16 years. After he left school he worked at various jobs from time to time until 1943 when he entered the service in the recent war, becoming a member of the Marine Corps Reserve. Nine months later he was honorably discharged "by reason of unsuitability for Marine Corps service," his medical record indicating that he was a psychoneurotic, "constitutional psychopathic state, inadequate personality." Within four months after his discharge he became engaged in a conspiracy in Lancaster County to rob the proprietor of a gasoline station, pleaded guilty and was sentenced to pay the costs of prosecution and placed on probation for a period of two years. He also participated in a couple of robberies in Dauphin County, pleaded guilty to one such offence and was sentenced to pay the costs and placed on probation for a period of three years. Failing to keep a steady job, he apparently became so destitute that he was obliged to pawn a suit of clothes in order to obtain money for the purchase of gasoline for his car on the occasion of the very expedition which resulted in the murder of which he was convicted.
One Robert Staley, a friend of defendant, told him that he knew of an aged man named Humpert who had considerable money at his home, and they decided to "go and get it". On March 24, 1947 they went from Harrisburg to Gettysburg in defendant's car; Staley drove because defendant was not familiar with the roads in Adams County. They spent the afternoon searching for Humpert's farm; they ultimately found it but discovered that Humpert was not at home; they then spent the evening at the home of Staley's sister where they drank a quantity of liquor so that defendant became intoxicated to some extent. At about 10.30 P.M. they started for Humpert's place; when they reached it they parked the car and both men got out and went to the house, defendant taking with him a leather-handled claw hammer. Staley rapped on the door and when Humpert appeared asked for an automobile jack for which he pretended to have immediate need. Humpert took a lantern and, followed by defendant, and he in turn by Staley, they walked toward the barn. Suddenly defendant struck Humpert, knocked him to the ground, and continued to hit him with the hammer. While this was going on Staley returned to the house but, finding the door locked, came back to defendant who reached into one of the pockets of the prostrate Humpert, took therefrom a key, and handed it to Staley. Both defendant and Staley then entered the house, made a search, and Staley found a pocket-book containing $1300 of which he afterwards gave defendant $65 claiming that he had found only $130. The two men then drove to Harrisburg; on the way defendant threw into a creek the hammer and a flashlight (these were later found and fished out by the police), and Staley also threw in the key. Later they washed, put on other clothes, and threw Humpert's pocket-book and the clothes they had worn during the commission of the crime into a creek in Cumberland County. Defendant had the heels of his boots changed by a shoemaker in order to prevent identification of his footprints at the scene of the murder, and he also purchased other tires for his car, throwing the old ones away on a dump. On the evening of March 26 Humpert's dead body was found lying in his barn with many dreadful lacerations of the scalp and face, blackened eyes, broken nose, a multitude of body bruises, and a depressed fracture of the skull.
Defendant was arrested by the State Police on April 1 and on the following day was taken by them to the Humpert home where he admitted his complicity in the crime and described in detail how it happened. Later on the same day he made a written confession. He was indicted on April 23 and arraigned on April 28; his trial began on April 30 and extended through May 6, 1947. He testified that he had not planned the crime with Staley and that when he left the home of Staley's sister he was so intoxicated that he did not recall anything that happened thereafter on that night.
Before trial, counsel for defendant petitioned, first the court below and then this Court, for a change of venue and also for a continuance, claiming that the public sentiment in Adams County had been very much aroused by the brutal murder of this old man and that highly inflammatory articles had appeared there in the public press emphasizing the fact that defendant and Staley had confessed to the murder. We refused a change of venue because a strong feeling of revulsion is inevitable when such a crime is committed, especially in a rural community, but here there was nothing to indicate that defendant would be unable to obtain a fair trial, and the event so proved, because the jurors were carefully selected, the trial proceeded with calmness and deliberation, the jury considered the testimony for several hours before they returned a verdict, and there was nothing to show that they were influenced in any way by bias or prejudice. As to the motion for a continuance, it appears that the trial began on the 37th day after the commission of the crime, the 29th day after defendant's arrest, and about 3 weeks after counsel had been retained; there is no pretense that, because of shortness of time, defendant was unable to produce witnesses who might otherwise have been available, or that his counsel could not make any investigation they desired in preparation for the trial. The granting or the refusal of a petition for a change of venue or for a continuance is largely a matter for the sound discretion of the trial court, and, unless that discretion is abused, which here it was not, its action will not be disturbed: -- Commonwealth v. Flood, 302 Pa. 190, 195, 196, 153 A. 152, 153; Commonwealth v. Deni, 317 Pa. 289, 292, 293, 176 A. 919, 920, 921; Commonwealth v. Lockard, 325 Pa. 56, 62, 63, 188 A. 755, 758; Commonwealth v. Schurtz, 337 Pa. 405, 408, 409, 10 A.2d 378, 380; Commonwealth v. Chavis, 357 Pa. 158, 166, 167, 53 A.2d 96, 100.
There were several photographs admitted in evidence showing the gruesome wounds on Humpert's face and head, the place where his body was discovered, and both the outside and the inside of his house and his barn. It has so long been the accepted practice to admit such photographs in evidence in the trial of criminal cases, and their use has been so frequently sanctioned and declared unobjectionable by repeated decisions of this Court, that the assignments of error based on their admission call for no extended discussion. All that the law requires is that photographs should not be introduced merely for the purpose of exciting the emotions of the jurors, but only where they are helpful in aiding them in their investigation of the crime and the defendant's guilt, and that purpose should be carefully explained to them. The matter is one for the exercise of the trial judge's discretion: Commonwealth v. Webb, 252 Pa. 187, 198, 97 A. 189, 193; Commonwealth v. Ware, 279 Pa. 282, 285, 123 A. 795, 796; Commonwealth v. Winter, 289 Pa. 284, 289, 137 A. 261, 263; Commonwealth v. Sydlosky, 305 Pa. 406, 409, 158 A. 154, 155; Commonwealth v. Dreamer, 324 Pa. 220, 223, 224, 188 A. 117, 118; Commonwealth v. Ferry, 326 Pa. 129, 132, 133, 191 A. 130, 131, 132; Commonwealth v. Peronace, 328 Pa. 86, 93, 94, 95, 195 A. 57, 60, 61; Commonwealth v. Yeager, 329 Pa. 81, 87, 88, 196 A. 827, 831; Commonwealth v. Earnest, 342 Pa. 544, 550, 21 A.2d 38, 40, 41. Here the learned trial judge several times instructed the jury that they must not allow the pictures to inflame their minds against defendant, that the photographs of the deceased were admitted only for the purpose of showing the position of his body as it was found lying in the barn and the location and severity of his wounds as indicating the violence of the attack made upon him and tending to prove that his death was due to a felonious killing and not to other causes. Nor was there any abuse of the trial judge's discretion in admitting in evidence the hammer said to have been used in the commission of the crime, the flashlight, defendant's boots, and some burlap bags with blood stains thereon which were found in the barn. Such objects have customarily been admitted in evidence in murder trials.
On the day following defendant's arrest he was taken to the Humpert farm and there, in the presence of police officials the district attorney and a court stenographer, he was questioned in regard to the crime. Asked whether...
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