Commonwealth v. Watts
| Decision Date | 05 January 1948 |
| Citation | 56 A.2d 81,358 Pa. 92 |
| Parties | Commonwealth v. Watts, Appellant |
| Court | Pennsylvania Supreme Court |
Argued December 1, 1947
Appeal, No. 158, Jan. T., 1947, from judgment of O. & T Phila. Co., Aug. Sessions, 1946, No. 417, in case of Commonwealth v. Benjamin Watts. Judgment affirmed.
Indictment charging defendant with murder. Before OLIVER, P.J.
Verdict of guilty with penalty of life imprisonment and judgment of sentence entered thereon. Defendant appealed.
Judgment and sentence affirmed.
Raymond Pace Alexander, for appellant.
Theodore L. Reimel, Assistant District Attorney, with him John H. Maurer, District Attorney, for appellee.
Before MAXEY, C.J., LINN, STERN, PATTERSON and JONES, JJ.
Combining the several complaints of defendant on turned a verdict of guilty of murder in the first degree with penalty of life imprisonment.
Defendant was charged with the murder of his wife, Ollie Watts. They had been married for ten years but were living apart, he with his mother and she with hers. There were two children on the marriage, a son Ronald, nine years of age at the time of the trial, and a daughter Eunice, aged eight. During the summer of 1946 Ronald was staying with his father and paternal grandmother, and Eunice was spending a week-end there; she was to have been sent back to her mother on Sunday, July 14, but defendant failed to return her as agreed upon. On the afternoon of Monday, July 15, her mother came to fetch her. Defendant went out in the street to meet his wife and told her he would not allow her to come in because of the bad feeling which existed between her and his mother. He then re-entered the house, went upstairs, put on an old coat in the pocket of which was a revolver, and came down and advanced toward the front door as his wife, who had returned, was trying to push to open. He attempted to hold the door shut but she succeeded in gaining an entry. He took out his revolver and fired two shots, the second of which struck her at close range in the chest, causing her death within a few hours. Defendant testified that in putting on his coat he had not noticed that the revolver was in one of the pockets; he said that he fired the first shot into the wall and then, as he retreated from his oncoming wife, he fell back on the stairway and He fled to Camden, on the way over throwing his gun into the river; the following day he surrendered to the police.
According to the Commonwealth's testimony which was that principally of the boy Ronald who was an eyewitness of the occurrence, the shooting was wholly inexcusable, cold-blooded and deliberate. Defendant's testimony, on the other hand, as also that of his mother and a Mrs. Armstead, was to the effect that when his wife approached the house, struggled to enter, and finally burst in the door, she had in her hand a razor blade with which she lunged at defendant, causing him to back up as far as he could to the stairway, and it was from the point that the shooting took place. However, in statements given to the police the day following the murder, neither defendant [*] nor his mother had mentioned anything about a razor blade or other weapon, nor did the police find any in the house when they came there immediately after the shooting or upon subsequent visits. Ronald said that his mother had nothing in her hands except a pocketbooks, -- no weapon of any kind. In his statement defendant did not claim that the shooting was accidental; he said that he "just wanted to scare her".
It is in the questions which the trial judge directed to Mrs Armstead that defendant finds one of his principal grievances. Mrs. Armstead testified that as she stood at the door of the house she heard him and his wife quarrelling, that later, as the witness was coming down the front steps to the pavement, defendant's wife had a razor blade in her hand, was talking in an extremely obscene fashion, and was making violent threats that she was "going to kill somebody". The witness then saw her knocking and banging at the door trying to open it; Mrs. Armstead walked away and at that time heard two shots fired in the house. The trial judge asked her whether she called for help; she replied that she did not, although, she said, there were other people in the street. The trial judge, apparently astonished at this testimony, pursued his questions as to why, since the witness had heard the quarrel between defendant and his wife and had seen her attempting to enter the house armed with a razor blade after threatening to kill somebody, she did not shout "murder" or seek otherwise to call attention to the situation. Defendant's counsel thereupon moved for the withdrawal of a...
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