Commonwealth v. Schroeder

• Decision Date: 24 November 1930
• Docket Number: 2
• Parties: Commonwealth v. Schroeder, Appellant
• Court: Pennsylvania Supreme Court

152 A. 835

Commonwealth v. Schroeder, Appellant

302 Pa. 1

No. 2

Supreme Court of Pennsylvania

November 24, 1930

Argued October 8, 1930

Appeal, No. 2, March T., 1931, by defendant, from judgment of O. & T. Lawrence Co., March T., 1930, No. 1, on verdict of guilty of murder of the first degree with penalty of death in case of Commonwealth v. Irene Schroeder alias Irene Schrader. Affirmed.

Indictment for murder. Before HILDEBRAND, P.J.

The opinion of the Supreme Court states the facts.

Verdict of guilty of murder of the first degree with penalty fixed of death. Defendant appealed.

Errors assigned were various rulings and instructions, quoting record seriatim.

We have reviewed all of the contentions made by appellant; none of them can be sustained. The assignments of error are all overruled, the judgment is affirmed and the record remitted to the court below for the purpose of execution.

Percy Allen Rose, with him Benjamin Jarrett, Thomas W. Dickey and K. H. Powell, for appellant. -- An effort in support of introducing evidence of defendant's environment was made by asking her the question: "In what kind of environment were you raised as to associations and surroundings?" The objection thereto of immateriality was made and was sustained by the court. This was error: Com. v Buccueri, 153 Pa. 553; Taylor v. Com., 109 Pa. 262; Com. v. Gearhardt, 205 Pa. 387; First Nat. Bank v. Wirebach, 106 Pa. 37.

It was error to permit medical experts for the Commonwealth to first testify defendant was sane and then to state that she was an habitual criminal.

The defense of irresistible impulse was on the ground of partial or a phase of insanity recognized by our courts from Com. v. Mosler, 4 Pa. 264, to Com. v. Cavalier, 284 Pa. 311.

If a fellow officer of deceased fired the fatal shot defendant was entitled to an acquittal.

Just what errors are to be considered basis or fundamental must necessarily depend on the facts of each case: White v. Moore, 288 Pa. 411; Myers v. Com., 83 Pa. 143.

Defense of irresistible impulse was available to defendant even if the homicide was wilful, deliberate and premeditated.

Medical experts are not permitted to pass upon the whole case and to base their conclusions as to sanity of defendant on reconciliations of contradictions in evidence: Yardley v. Cuthbertson, 108 Pa. 395; McMinis v. Transit Co., 288 Pa. 377; McDyer v. Rys., 227 Pa. 641.

Charles J. Margiotti, with him John S. Powers, District Attorney, Sebastian C. Pugliese and Edward Friedman, for appellee. -- Defense of irresistible impulse to steal, rob and flee, was not available to defendant: Com. v. Cavalier, 284 Pa. 311; Com. v. Wireback, 190 Pa. 138; Coyle v. Com., 100 Pa. 573; Com. v. Calhoun, 238 Pa. 474.

Secondary evidence is inadmissible to prove partial or special insanity independent of the opinions of properly qualified lay or expert witnesses: Com. v. Snyder, 224 Pa. 526; Com. v. Cleary, 148 Pa. 26; Com. v. Dale, 264 Pa. 362; Com. v. Cavalier, 284 Pa. 318.

When evidence offered is relevant in part only, the court is not bound to separate the good from the bad, but may reject it as a whole: Hunter v. Bremer, 256 Pa. 257; Justice v. Watkins, 276 Pa. 138; Coyle v. Com., 104 Pa. 117.

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

OPINION

MR. JUSTICE SCHAFFER:

Irene Schroeder stands convicted of murder of the first degree; death has been fixed as her punishment. Her appeal brings the entire record before us for review. We have painstakingly examined it in view of the various questions which she raises for our consideration. To all of them we have given careful thought, having in mind the consequences to the condemned, and our duty as fixed by the Act of February 15, 1870, P.L. 15, to ascertain whether in the proofs submitted against her there appear the elements of murder of the first degree, warranting the punishment meted out, and also whether any reversible error occurred in the trial. Our conclusion is that appellant was fairly and impartially tried, that all the elements of first degree murder were shown to be present and that no reversible error is manifest.

To appreciate the situation surrounding the crime and to envisage clearly the main legal question involved, the incidents leading up to the homicide, those surrounding its actual commission and many of the ones following it must be stated with some fullness. The circumstances are so dramatic and unusual that they might well tax credulity if not established by unimpeached testimony, including that of the woman herself.

She was twenty-one years old when the murder was committed, was married and had one child about four years old. She had left her husband and was living meretriciously with Glenn Dague, who has also been convicted of the crime and is under sentence of death. For some months before December 27, 1929, when the killing occurred, she and Dague had carried on a series of robberies. They operated from Wheeling, West Virginia, and preyed upon communities in a wide circuit therefrom. Their crimes were carefully planned and skillfully and daringly executed.

On the morning after Christmas, 1929, appellant, Dague, and appellant's brother, Tom Crawford, left Wheeling in a stolen Chevrolet automobile equipped with license plates from another stolen car. They took her little son with them; he was evidently carried to aid escape. Each of the adults, was armed with a loaded revolver. Appellant was familiar with the use of firearms. In pursuance of a plan they had made, they drove to Butler, in this State, reaching a hotel there between ten and eleven o'clock at night, where they registered as the Albert Courtright family of Dillonvale, Ohio. Leaving the hotel the following morning about eleven o'clock, they drove to the vicinity of a grocery store in Butler. Dague alighted from the automobile, entered the store, made a small purchase and left. Some little time later defendant appeared in the store and asked the manager, who was alone, for some apples. In order to get them he had to come from behind the counter. As he was stooping to get the apples, Dague entered the store and confronted him with a drawn revolver. Irene Schroeder turned from the counter and did likewise. At the point of their pistols they marched him into a rear room, bound him with heavy twine prepared for the purpose, which Dague took from his pocket, gagged and robbed him. While this was going on a customer entered the store. Immediately appellant went to him and at the point of her revolver compelled him to enter the rear room, where he too was bound and gagged. While in the store defendant stole $69 from the cash register. On their way out they met another customer to whom she spoke, saying "The manager will be out in a minute." While Dague and the woman were engaged in robbing the manager, Tom Crawford was in the store on guard. During the time they were all in the store, the child was concealed in the automobile under the dashboard. Entering the car, the three felons drove rapidly in the direction of New Castle. The store manager shortly after their departure attracted the attention of a person entering the store. The police of Butler were notified of the robbery and information of it was telephoned to all the near-by towns, among those receiving the word being Corporal Brady Paul, who was in charge of the State Highway Patrol detail in New Castle. Accompanied by private Ernest C. Moore, he proceeded by motorcycle on the Butler-New Castle Road to intercept the robbers. They stopped all cars proceeding toward New Castle and in doing so halted the one in which the defendant, Dague, Crawford and the child were riding. Dague, the woman and the child were in the front seat, Crawford in the rear. Dague, followed by appellant, got out of the car; they drew their revolvers on Paul as they alighted and he was forced back to the rear of the automobile. Moore, the other officer, was covered by Dague and Paul by the woman. Moore moved toward the front of the car and as he was doing so, Crawford from the rear of the car shot at him, hitting him in the nose. Crawford continued to fire at him and Dague likewise. One of the shots struck Moore on the head and he fell unconscious in front of the car.

While Moore was being fired at by Dague and Crawford, defendant, was giving attention to Paul, who had put up his hand as she directed. She shot at him; his body swayed and his left arm twitched. He backed away from her and she shot at him again and he fell over. A physician who attended him after the shooting testified that such a wound as he received in the abdomen would knock him down. When he fell she turned and ran to the running board of the car facing Moore and shot twice at him. Paul arose, drew his revolver and holding his abdomen ran toward a telephone pole alongside the road. Dague pushed the unconscious form of Moore away from the front of the automobile, then ran to the rear of the car, fired a shot at Paul and hastily entered the automobile and started it in the direction of New Castle. As the car sped down the road, Paul emptied his revolver at it, striking it several times.

Paul and Moore were immediately taken to the hospital in New Castle, where Paul died shortly after arrival, as the result of the gun-shot wound in the abdomen. The bullet causing his death was of 38 calibre. He also had a gunshot wound in his right leg and one in his right arm. The fatal bullet and the one taken from his arm were shown to have been fired from the same weapon, a 38 calibre special Spanish revolver, which the testimony indicates was the kind of revolver used by defendant. Moore recovered from his wounds.

When the fleeing felons reached New Castle, they pa...