Commonwealth v. Williams

• Decision Date: 05 January 1932
• Docket Number: 349
• Citation: 160 A. 602,307 Pa. 134
• Parties: Commonwealth v. Williams, Appellant
• Court: Pennsylvania Supreme Court

160 A. 602

307 Pa. 134

Commonwealth v. Williams, Appellant

No. 349

Supreme Court of Pennsylvania

January 5, 1932

Argued November 23, 1931

Appeal, No. 349, Jan. T., 1931, by defendant, from judgment of O. & T. Phila. Co., Dec. T., 1930, No. 166, on verdict of murder of the first degree with penalty fixed as death, in case of Commonwealth v. Harold E. Williams. Reversed.

Indictment for murder. Before SMITH, P.J.

The opinion of the Supreme Court states the facts.

Verdict of guilty of murder of the first degree with penalty fixed as death, on which judgment of sentence was passed. Defendant appealed.

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

Judgment reversed with a new venire.

Samuel Moyerman, for appellant. -- Under the Act of May 14, 1925, P.L. 759, giving the jury the right to fix the penalty in a murder case at death or life imprisonment by its verdict, evidence may be offered tending to show the crime resulted from emotional instability and passion rather than from a savage and hopelessly antisocial nature, so that the discretion given by the act may be exercised on a rational basis and not in an arbitrary, capricious, or whimsical manner: Com. v. Parker, 294 Pa. 144, 152; Com. v. Ritter, 13 Pa. D. & C. 285; Com. v. Mellor, 294 Pa. 339; Com. v. Schroeder, 302 Pa. 11; Com. v. Dague, 302 Pa. 13; Com. v. Scott, 14 Pa. D. & C. 191.

A defendant on trial for murder, having entered a plea of not guilty wherein the defense is insanity, after his alienists have testified that he could not distinguish between right and wrong at the time of the act, may show his state of mind, particularly as evidenced by his acts and conduct over the period of time immediately preceding the death, in corroboration of the expert's testimony: Com. v. Buccieri, 153 Pa. 535.

One of the great issues and possibly the real issue in this case was the status of the defendant's mind at the time of the commission of the act in question. Upon it depended the conclusion as to whether a murder had occurred for which defendant was legally responsible: Com. v. Santos, 275 Pa. 515; Mut. Life Ins. v. Hillmon, 145 U.S. 285; Com. v. Rosier, 2 Pa. D. & C. 319; Com. v. Crow, 303 Pa. 91; Com. v. Schroeder, 302 Pa. 1; Com. v. Parker, 294 Pa. 144; Com. v. Mellor, 294 Pa. 339; Com. v. Ferrigan, 44 Pa. 386.

Charles F. Kelley, Assistant District Attorney, with him John Monaghan, District Attorney, for appellee. -- When the accused denies that he committed the act, then the absence of all motive on his part for committing it is a very material fact in his favor; but where it is admitted or established that he did commit it, the motive is unimportant in determining guilt, unless, as in this case, insanity be set up as a defense, when the absence of any motive which would prompt a sane man to the deed adds to the strength of positive evidence of unsoundness of mind: Com. v. Buccieri, 153 Pa. 535; Specht v. Com., 8 Pa. 312.

In a homicide case, character of deceased is generally irrelevant; his badness cannot excuse the assault upon him: Com. v. Ferrigan, 44 Pa. 386, 388.

Self-serving declarations which are clearly not part of the res gestae are incompetent, and inadmissible: Hartman v. Ins. Co., 21 Pa. 466; Webber v. Com., 119 Pa. 223.

Defendant complains that his wife was not permitted to testify as to the cause of the depressed condition of her husband and his sudden change. Such information could not be otherwise than hearsay, and, of course, irrelevant and immaterial in this action: Com. v. Gibson, 275 Pa. 338.

A right to a separate trial does not give defendants the right to demand to be tried jointly, and the court in its discretion may order separate trials over an objection that defendants should be tried together: Com. v. Hughes, 11 Phila. 430; Com. v. Kreisher, 79 Pa.Super. 428.

The Act of May 14, 1925, P.L. 759, does not permit the introduction of irrelevant, immaterial and inadmissible evidence: Com. v. Schroeder, 302 Pa. 1.

Before FRAZER, C.J., WALLING, SIMPSON, KEPHART, SCHAFFER, MAXEY and DREW, JJ.

OPINION

MR. JUSTICE KEPHART:

The details of the crime for which Harold E. Williams was convicted of murder and sentenced to death are stated quite fully in the proceeding case against Clara Grace Prophet, and need not be repeated except as they are necessary to an understanding of the present case. Williams, when on the stand in his own defense, testified to the agreement to murder Prophet, in this respect substantiating the confessions introduced against him and Mrs. Prophet. His testimony was as follows: "What I was to do on the first floor was to make this appear as if a burglar had entered the house, to cover up the real reason for this crime. I was to make it appear as though a burglar had entered the house by opening the drawers in the dining room, dumping them out, and I was supposed to take the screen out of the back window and open the back door. In other words, I was to make it look on the first floor as if a burglar had entered and committed the crime, to cover up the real reason, which was the agreement between me and my sister. I was in such a state of mind I had only one object when I entered that house. That was to kill my brother-in-law, and I did." In addition to controverting certain aspects of the confession the defense was insanity when the crime was committed, although he was sane at the trial. The assignments all relate to trial errors, including the alleged error in the rejection of evidence to mitigate the penalty.

Considerable evidence to show circumstances calculated to induce insanity was excluded by the court below. This was manifest error. "As human conditions of every sort are created or influenced by external environment, so too the diseased mental condition which we term insanity may be precipitated, intensified or otherwise affected by external events coming to the apprehension of the person. Accordingly, circumstances calculated to induce this mental condition may always be admitted to evidence the probability of such affectation; the only limitation is that the circumstance be in itself capable in some degree of producing such an effect . . . and that some further foundation for probability be laid by other evidence that there was a diseased mental condition": Wigmore, Evidence, 2d ed., 483, section 231.

The Commonwealth presented an impregnable case; it showed, by evidence of persons who could not be said to be hostile or interested, that this homicide was the result of deliberate preparation. Why the chance was taken of a reversal by a protest to evidence which at the time would not have hurt its case materially, may be accounted for by the intense zeal and earnestness to prevent the culprit's escaping punishment. In this, the trial judge overstepped the security guaranteed the accused to a fair trial. As we stated in a case some years ago, it is not wise to rigidly exclude evidence "because its materiality is not clearly obvious." It is better to give the benefit of the doubt to the prisoner in rulings on trivial evidence. "A case such as the Commonwealth so manifestly presented, should not be placed in peril of a reversal by technical rulings on evidence which could not have weakened the Commonwealth's Case": Com. v. Biddle, 200 Pa. 640, 646.

We regret that on account of these errors, such an important trial, costing time, labor, and expense, should end in a failure to accomplish perfect justice. But we cannot escape or shirk the responsibility of securing, as far as we are able, a fair trial which the law of the land gives to every man. The prisoner is entitled to a full, fair and impartial trial, without which no man should suffer the extreme penalty. There is less injury to be done the State by granting a new trial than to the accused by refusing it.

Defendant produced two experts who were eminent in their profession, whose integrity was not in the slightest degree attacked, who testified that at the time the offense was committed, defendant was insane. It formed the basis for the excluded evidence which was to follow. We do not hold that it is first necessary to establish the fact of insanity by other evidence before evidence of acts on the basis of insanity may be considered, though at times a trial court may direct that it be done. The action of the court below in here requiring it was proper under the circumstances.

From the possible answers to the many questions propounded, various material facts might have been revealed. Counsel for defendant asked his sister, Grace Prophet, to relate conversations with him as to Prophet's relations with her, as a circumstance tending to derange his mentality up until the crime was committed. These conversations, relating to the abnormal sexual attacks on her and her son, might have so aroused his anger and passion, so preyed on his weak or even normal mind, and so dethroned his reason, that it became impossible for him to know the difference between right and wrong, and that in this state of mind he killed Prophet. His wife was asked concerning the changed condition of her husband, and the cause of it, and his mother was asked in relation to these same matters.

While the offers or questions were not couched in terms which clearly set forth the purpose of the testimony to be given yet the questions rejected were such as might well have brought out the scenes which he claimed caused his insane delusion. The evidence was competent for the purpose offered. If the questions were not clear to the court below, it should have required offers which would have brought out the facts to be relied on; but even had there been such offers, it is apparent, from the court's answers in sustaining the objections to the...