Commonwealth v. Harman

• Citation: 4 Pa. 269
• Parties: COMMONWEALTH v. BRIDGET HARMAN.
• Decision Date: 01 January 1865
• Court: United States State Supreme Court of Pennsylvania

4 Pa. 269

COMMONWEALTH v. BRIDGET HARMAN.

Supreme Court of Pennsylvania.

After argument by Stokes for the Commonwealth, and Lehman for the defence, the opinion of the court was given by GIBSON, C. J.

We consider the evidence to be inadmissible. The nature of the transaction in the magistrate's office was such as to exclude it. "If you do not tell the truth, I will commit you," was the language used to her; language sufficient to exclude any confession induced by it. The administering of an oath by the magistrate, under such circumstances, was a gross outrage upon the accused; any information drawn by it, or subsequently given on its basis, is inadmissible. Here there was an interval of only a night and part of a day between the evidence as thus extracted, and that now sought to be introduced. Gibson, the constable, was present at both periods; and his presence, as well as the continuance of the same scenery as surrounded the prisoner at the first confessedly inadmissible confessions, were calculated to produce on the mind of the prisoner the same influence at the latter period as existed at the first. No warning was given; but, on the contrary, the only question put was one tending to entrap the prisoner.

A question having arisen as to the duty of the coroner to call in medical assistance, in case of a post mortem examination —

GIBSON, C. J.

There ought to be post mortem examinations in all cases of death by violence. An action lies against the county at common law by a physician for trouble and labour expended in such examination. A case to this effect was decided by us last spring at Pittsburgh.

BELL, J.

In the country, so far as my experience goes, it is always the practice for the coroner in such cases to have an examination by medical men. The court, in fact, always has exacted it.

The prisoner offered no evidence.

Stokes, and Read, Attorney-general, for the Commonwealth, and Daugherty and Lehman, for the defence, having addressed the jury, they were charged as follows: —

GIBSON, C. J.

You have heard the law of homicide so accurately defined by the counsel who assists the attorney-general, that it is unnecessary to discuss it at length. Murder is the unlawful killing of a human being with malice aforethought, express or implied. If the prisoner at the bar drowned her child, she is guilty, by the law of Pennsylvania, of murder in the first degree. There is no middle ground or question of degrees. If she is guilty of the killing, there is but one verdict which you can give. With this instruction it is our duty to tell you, that what you have to determine, is a question of fact; that it is for your exclusive decision; and that we intimate no opinion as to the conclusion which you ought to draw.

The evidence is so simple and has been so thoroughly discussed, that a further attempt to analyze it, or collate it, or pass it in review, would render you no assistance; and I therefore shall confine my remarks to the distinctive character and value of it. No witness has been produced who saw the act committed; and hence it is urged for the prisoner, that the evidence is only circumstantial, and consequently entitled to a very inferior degree of credit, if to any credit at all. But that consequence does not necessarily follow. Circumstantial evidence is, in the abstract, nearly, though perhaps not altogether, as strong as positive evidence; in the concrete, it may be infinitely stronger. A fact positively sworn to by a single eye-witness of blemished character, is not so satisfactorily proved, as is a fact which is the necessary consequence of a chain of other facts sworn to by many witnesses of undoubted credibility. Indeed, I scarcely know whether there is such a thing as evidence purely positive. You see a man discharge a gun at another, you see the flash, you hear the report, you see the person fall a lifeless corpse; and you INFER from all these circumstances that there was a ball discharged from the gun, which entered his body and caused his death, because such is the usual and natural cause of such an effect. But you did not see the ball leave the gun, pass through the air, and enter the body...