Commonwealth v. Wooley
| Decision Date | 07 January 1918 |
| Docket Number | 9 |
| Citation | 102 A. 947,259 Pa. 249 |
| Parties | Commonwealth v. Wooley, Appellant |
| Court | Pennsylvania Supreme Court |
Argued October 15, 1917
Appeal, No. 9, Oct. T., 1917, by defendant, from sentence of O. & T. Bradford Co., Sept. T., 1916, No. 1, on verdict of guilty of voluntary manslaughter in case of Commonwealth v George Mitchell Wooley. Reversed.
Indictment for murder. Before MAXWELL, P.J.
The facts appear by the opinion of the Supreme Court.
Verdict of guilty of voluntary manslaughter upon which sentence was passed. Defendant appealed.
Errors assigned, among others, were various rulings on evidence and the charge of the court.
William G. Schrier, with him Charles E. Mills, for appellant. -- It is reversible error to refuse to permit the defendant on trial for murder to be asked on direct-examination whether at the time he fired the shot he thought he was in peril of his life or of great bodily harm: Commonwealth v Garanchoskie, 251 Pa. 247; Runyan v. The State, 57 Ind. 80; West v. The State, 59 Ind. 113; Commonwealth v. Woodward, 102 Mass. 155; Wallace v. United States, 162 U.S. Repr. 466.
An error committed by the court in charging that if defendant drew the gun thinking it was empty, for the purpose merely of frightening deceased, and shot and killed the deceased, he would be guilty only of voluntary manslaughter, inadvertently using the word "voluntary" instead of "involuntary," is not remedied by a correct statement of the distinction between voluntary and involuntary manslaughter in another part of the charge: Selin v. Snyder, 11 S. & R. 319; Gearing v. Lacher, 146 Pa. 397; Baker v. Hagey, 177 Pa. 128; Commonwealth v. Deitrick, 221 Pa. 7; Commonwealth v. Greene, 227 Pa. 86.
David J. Fanning, District Attorney, for appellee.
Before BROWN, C.J., POTTER, MOSCHZISKER, FRAZER and WALLING, JJ.
The appellant was convicted in the court below of voluntary manslaughter on an indictment charging him with murder. His plea was that he was acting in self-defense, under circumstances which made him believe that his life was in danger, or that he was about to suffer great bodily harm, and that to save his life or avoid such harm he shot the deceased. While he was being examined as a witness in his own behalf, he was asked the following question: "At the time you fired this shot will you state to the court and jury whether or not you thought you were in peril of your life, or of great bodily harm?" This was disallowed, and its disallowance is the subject of the first assignment of error.
The appellant was a competent witness for himself, and the question which he was not permitted to answer bore directly upon the defense he was making. He alone, of all the witnesses called by him, could testify as to whether he really thought he was in peril of his life or of great bodily harm, and no testimony could have been more competent than his own as to his belief that he was in such danger. What credit was to be given to him was for the jury under all the circumstances surrounding the homicide, and it is to be remembered that they might fairly have inferred to his prejudice that he had not been in fear of bodily harm if he had failed to so testify. The refusal to permit him to do so was clear error: Commonwealth v. Garanchoskie, 251 Pa. 247; Wallace v. United States, 162 U.S. Rep 466; Commonwealth v. Woodward, 102 Mass. 155; Batten v. The State, 80 Ind. 394; Taylor v. The People, 21 Colo. 426; Elliott on Evidence, Vol. 4, Sec. 3041. In his opinion refusing a new trial the trial judge admitted this error, but refused to correct it, because, in his judgment, there had been developed on the cross-examination of the defendant what would have been an affirmative answer to the disallowed question. This was not so. In no one of his answers to the questions put to him by the district attorney does he say that, when he shot the deceased, he thought he was in peril of his life or of great bodily harm, and it was not judicially frank or fair to hold that his mere admission that he was scared and in fear was the equivalent of his unqualified declaration that he had acted in self-defense because he thought he was in peril of his life or of great...
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