Commonwealth v. Hadok

• Citation: 313 Pa. 110,169 A. 111
• Parties: COMMONWEALTH v. HADOK.
• Decision Date: 27 November 1933
• Court: United States State Supreme Court of Pennsylvania

169 A. 111
313 Pa. 110

COMMONWEALTH
v.
HADOK.

Supreme Court of Pennsylvania.

Nov. 27, 1933.

169 A. 111

Appeal No. 160, March term, 1933, from judgment and sentence of Court of Oyer and Terminer, Allegheny County; J. Frank Graff, President Judge Thirty-Third Judicial District, Specially Presiding Judge.

Matt Hadok was convicted of first degree murder, and he appeals.

Affirmed, and record remitted for execution.

Argued before FRAZEK, C. J., and SIMPSON, KEPHART, SCHAFFER, MAXEY, DREW, and LINN, JJ.

Warren H. Van Kirk and Francis L. MeFarren, both of Pittsburgh, for appellant.

Andrew T. Park, Dist. Atty., and Earle R. Jackson, Asst. Dist. Atty., both of Pittsburgh, for the Commonwealth.

DREW, Justice.

On December 6, 1930, in the course of a robbery of the Allegheny Valley Trust Company, at Verona, Pa., Charles McFarland, the assistant treasurer, was shot and killed. A little more than a year later, on January 23, 1932, the defendant and one Mike Mamulo were arrested at Rankin, Pa., as suspicious persons. After having been positively identified by three men as the man whom they had seen fleeing from the scene of this crime, defendant was indicted and placed on trial for the murder of McFarland. The jury found him guilty of murder of the first degree, and fixed the penalty at life imprisonment. (Mamulo, who was indicted with him, was also convicted; see Com. v. Mamulo (Pa. Sup.) 169 A. 109, opinion this day filed.) From the judgment and sentence entered against him, defendant appealed.

The defense was an alibi; the defendant by his own testimony and that of one witness, whose testimony was very weak, claiming that he was in Youngstown, Ohio, at the time of the commission of the crime. The defendant testified further that prior to his arrest he had never been in Verona, that he had not heard of the crime until after his arrest, and that it was not until January 30, 1932, when he was in jail, that he learned that the crime had been committed on December 6, 1930. On cross-examination the district attorney produced an envelope containing a letter, and, after the envelope, with the letter in it, had been marked as an exhibit in the case, the defendant admitted that the letter bore his signature. The commonwealth, in rebuttal, offered in evidence "this letter, identified by the defendant as

169 A. 112

being signed by himself, for the purpose of rebutting the statement that he did not know the date of the crime at Verona until January 30, 1932, and for the...