Commonwealth v. Cavalier

• Decision Date: 23 November 1925
• Docket Number: 342
• Citation: 131 A. 229,284 Pa. 311
• Parties: Commonwealth v. Cavalier, Appellant
• Court: Pennsylvania Supreme Court

131 A. 229

284 Pa. 311

Commonwealth v. Cavalier, Appellant

No. 342

Supreme Court of Pennsylvania

November 23, 1925

Argued September 29, 1925

Appeal, No. 342, Jan. T., 1925, by defendant, from judgment of O. & T., Schuylkill Co., Nov. T., 1924, No. 1072, on verdict of guilty of murder of the first degree in case of Commonwealth v. William C. Cavalier, alias William C. Yost. Affirmed.

Indictment for murder. Before KOCH, J.

The opinion of the Supreme Court states the facts.

Verdict of guilty of murder of the first degree, on which sentence was passed. Defendant appealed.

Errors assigned were various rulings and instructions, quoting record.

The judgment is affirmed, and the record is remitted to the court below for the purpose of execution.

Prall B. Roads, with him Charles W. Staudenmeier, for appellant. -- The court erred in admitting in evidence the statement purporting to be the written confession of defendant.

Dr Knight and Mrs. Walker were competent: Stevenson v. Coal Co., 203 Pa. 316; Taylor v. Com., 109 Pa. 262.

The court erred in the part of the charge relating to irresistible impulse: Com. v. Foltz, 5 Pa. D. & C. 559.

The court erred in the part of the charge relating to punishment Com. v. Switzer, 134 Pa. 383.

Cyrus M. Palmer, District Attorney, with him Morris H. Spicker, Assistant District Attorney, and Roger Prosser, for appellee. -- A confession is admissible if affirmatively shown to have been voluntary, whether made to a private individual or to a person in authority: Com. v. Eagan, 190 Pa. 10.

A boy fourteen years of age, under our law, as to his competency to commit crime, stands in exactly the same position as if he were twenty-one or thirty-one: Fife v. Com., 29 Pa. 429; Com. v. Dillon, 4 Dall. 116.

The question whether or not a witness is competent to testify as an expert is a preliminary one for the court: Brennan v. R.R., 230 Pa. 228; Com. v. Wireback, 190 Pa. 138; Com. v. Gibbons, 3 Pa. Superior Ct. 408; Blasband v. Transit Co., 42 Pa.Super. 325; Com. v. Cressinger, 193 Pa. 326.

Before MOSCHZISKER, C.J., FRAZER, WALLING, SIMPSON, KEPHART, SADLER and SCHAFFER, JJ.

OPINION

MR. JUSTICE SCHAFFER:

Counsel for appellant, prosecuting this appeal from a conviction of murder of the first degree, call to our attention the fact that at the time of the commission of the crime their client was a boy not quite six months past the age of fourteen years, and contend that he was not mentally responsible for his crime; also that the record discloses trial errors which should cause us to set the verdict aside. The killing was cold-blooded, premeditated and atrocious, as the confession of the defendant discloses. Telling of its circumstances, he said: "I was sitting out on the back porch when I first thought about killing my grandmother; she was out in the yard. I then went upstairs and got the 22 calibre rifle out of her room, also some cartridges. I then went downstairs and sat down in a rocking chair until she came in and went upstairs, then I followed her up about five minutes later. The door of her room was open and she was standing at the foot of the bed, sort of sideways. She did not see me as I didn't make any noise going up the stairs. I was standing in the room next to hers in the doorway when I shot her the first time; I aimed for her head; she fell over on the floor. I stood there for a few minutes, then I walked into her room and fired another shot into her body as she was lying on the floor. I then searched her clothes and found her pocketbook in the pocket of her dress, I took the money out and threw the pocketbook in the closet of the room. I put the rifle back in the corner where she always kept it, went downstairs, locking the door of her room when I left it, putting the key in a little bowl on the shelf in the room next to hers. I put some toilet paper in her mouth, as she was lying on the floor, because she was moaning. She was taking off her shoes when I shot her. After I went downstairs I cut the screen in the kitchen window. After cutting the screen I shook the blood off my right hand onto the wall near the door, then I washed my hands and went out on the porch and sat down until my grandfather came home. I told him that grandmother went away. I left the house about half past four and went to my mother's home on First Street and had supper and then went to the movies and after the movies went home and went to bed. Before going to bed I put the money in a pillow under the mattress."

The first position assumed by appellant's counsel is that the confession should not have been received. It is a little difficult to see why it should have been ruled out. There was no evidence going to show that it was not voluntary; on the contrary, all the testimony indicated that it was. It is true it was uttered to policemen who were investigating the crime (which does not invalidate it: Com. v. Mosler, 4 Pa. 264; Com. v. Eagan, 190 Pa. 10, 20; Com. v. Spardute, 278 Pa. 37, 47) and was made after midnight, when they had questioned the boy for perhaps four hours. There is, however, no evidence that it was obtained by inducements held out to him or by force, threats or duress. The defendant had persisted in the denial of the crime, indeed had thrown suspicion upon an uncle as the perpetrator of it, and maintained this attitude until the bloody suit of clothes which he (defendant) had worn when he did the shooting, found in the closet of the room in which he had slept on the night of the crime, was produced to him. He then admitted that he was the slayer. It is apparent from a reading of the testimony that he recognized the futility of denial when his bloody garments were brought before him. His counsel in their brief say that he does not deny the killing and we agree with what was said by the court in its opinion dismissing the motion for a new trial, that the evidence of the unlawful slaying is overwhelming without the written confession. The argument of his counsel would seem to proceed on the assumption that the confession should have been excluded because he was a boy only fourteen years and six months old when he made it, and since it was made to police officers and obtained late at night after questioning him at great length. As to the age of the boy, that in itself could not exclude the confession, because the law has always recognized that a boy fourteen years of age is responsible for his criminal acts. That it was made to police officers who interrogated him at great length cannot militate against the confession because the police officers in the discharge of their duties as the protectors of society were properly questioning him and entitled to do so and to avail themselves of his answers, provided they did not obtain his statements by improper means, which they testified they did not, and of this there is no denial. "It is the manner and circumstances under which a confession is procured, not the person to whom it is made, that determines its admissibility": Com. v. Eagan, supra., 21. Furthermore, not only did the defendant confess his crime to the state police, but to several other witnesses, doctors and others, who were called to establish that he was insane. It is not even pretended that these confessions were not voluntarily made. Besides, the confession is corroborated by circumstances which carry conviction of its truth and of defendant's connection with the crime. The rifle with which he did the killing was found where he said it would be. The stolen money was found under the pillow in the bed of his mother's house, in which he slept on the night of the killing, and his suit, covered with blood, in a closet in the room where he said he had put it. His bloody shirt turned inside out to conceal the blood stains was found in the closet of the room where the murder was done, as he stated it would be. The cut in the window screen was as he said it would be found, the toilet paper was in the mouth of his victim, as he said he had placed it, the blood was on the wall near the kitchen door, where he said he had shaken it from his hand, and the key of the door of the room in which he committed the murder was located in the bowl in an adjoining room, where he said he had placed it.

It is the contention of his counsel that the confession is necessary in the case to show that the killing was wilful, deliberate and premeditated or that the crime was committed in the perpetration of a robbery. Our reading of the record does not lead us to so conclude. There was ample and convincing evidence in the case, aside from the confession, to establish the ingredients of murder of the first degree. Seven bullets were found in the body of the deceased. This circumstance in itself is sufficient to establish the intent to kill: Com. v. Eckerd, 174 Pa. 137, 149; Com. v. Caliendo, 279 Pa. 293, 296. That there was deliberation and premeditation in the killing appears from the fact that the rifle with which it was done carried but a single cartridge and had to be reloaded before each succeeding shot.

The defense attempted to be made for appellant is that he was mentally incompetent and insane at the time of the killing. To meet this defense, the Commonwealth called, among other witnesses, Dr. Albert P. Knight, who in answer to a hypothetical question gave it as his professional opinion that the defendant knew the nature and quality of his act and could distinguish between right and wrong. It is urged that this doctor was not competent to express an opinion. The witness was a practicing physician, a graduate of the University of Pennsylvania, and at the time of the trial had been engaged in the practice of his profession for some four or five years. He was at no time connected with an institution...