Commonwealth v. Guida
| Court | United States State Supreme Court of Pennsylvania |
| Citation | 19 A.2d 98 |
| Parties | COMMONWEALTH v. GUIDA. |
| Decision Date | 24 March 1941 |
COMMONWEALTH
v.
GUIDA.
Supreme Court of Pennsylvania.
March 24, 1941.
Appeal No. 301, January term, 1940, from judgment and sentence of court of Oyer and Terminer and General Jail Delivery and Quarter Sessions of the Peace, Philadelphia County, April term, 1940, No. 493; Harry S. McDevitt, President Judge.
Guiseppe Guida was convicted of murder in the first degree, and he appeals.
Judgment affirmed.
Argued before SCHAFFER, C. J., and MAXEY, DREW, LINN, STERN, PATTERSON, and PARKER, JJ.
Angelo L. Scaricamazza, Frank J. Marolla, Jr., and Thomas D. McBride, all of Philadelphia, for appellant.
Charles F. Kelley, Dist. Atty., John A. Boyle, Asst. Dist. Atty., and Vincent A. Carroll, all of Philadelphia, for appellee.
PARKER, Justice.
Guiseppe Guida was indicted with others for the murder of Winifred Flannery at
Lenox Apartments in Philadelphia on May 16, 1935. Guida was convicted of first degree murder with penalty of life imprisonment and sentenced. He has appealed to this court raising a question as to the sufficiency of the evidence to sustain the verdict and, more particularly, contending that unintentional death occurring in an attempted perpetration of a robbery is not murder.
Several weeks prior to the killing this defendant visited John Lagana and Sam Ruggeri, codefendants in the indictment, at a market in Washington, D.C., and asked them if they would be interested in making a large sum of money in Philadelphia. They showed interest and several days later appellant and appellant's alleged common-law wife again saw Lagana and Ruggeri, and appellant explained that he had information concerning one Morrison, a retired naval officer, who kept large sums of money in a secret compartment in a chest of drawers in his rooms in Lenox Apartments and that this man would be an easy victim.
On May 15, 1935, Lagana, his brother-in-law, Ruggeri, Lagana's wife, appellant and his wife drove to Philadelphia in appellant's car. They stopped at a restaurant near Rittenhouse Square that afternoon and Mrs. Guida made a telephone call. On leaving the restaurant, Guida advised Ruggeri and Lagana that the job was not ready and that they would have to wait until the next day. That evening the five registered at a hotel under fictitious names. The three men met in one room and discussed for several hours plans for obtaining the money. Later appellant informed Lagana and Ruggeri that Morrison and one Esther Smith, who was a frequenter of his...
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