Cryderman v. State

• Decision Date: 31 March 1917
• Docket Number: 19749
• Citation: 161 N.W. 1045,101 Neb. 85
• Parties: WILLIAM W. CRYDERMAN v. STATE OF NEBRASKA
• Court: Nebraska Supreme Court

161 N.W. 1045

101 Neb. 85

WILLIAM W. CRYDERMAN v. STATE OF NEBRASKA

No. 19749

Supreme Court of Nebraska

March 31, 1917

ERROR to the district court for Cherry county: WILLIAM H. WESTOVER JUDGE. Affirmed. Sentence reduced.

AFFIRMED.

Sterling F. Mutz, for plaintiff in error.

Willis E. Reed, Attorney General, and Charles S. Roe, contra.

SEDGWICK J., ROSE, J. MORRISSEY, C. J., not sitting.

OPINION

SEDGWICK, J.

By information filed in the district court for Cherry county, Nebraska, the defendant, William W. Cryderman, was charged with the crime of murder in the first degree. It was alleged that he did kill and murder one Nellie Heelan in said county. The jury found the defendant guilty of murder in the first degree, and in their verdict added: "We further find and say that the defendant William W. Cryderman shall suffer death." The court thereupon sentenced the defendant to suffer death by electrocution, and the case has been brought to this court for review.

1. The first contention is that the corpus delicti is not proved. An alleged confession of the defendant was in evidence, and it is now insisted that there is no other evidence, proving or tending to prove the corpus delicti. The guilt of the defendant must be proved beyond a reasonable doubt. The extrajudicial confession of the defendant alone is not sufficient evidence to justify conviction. There must be other substantial evidence of the corpus delicti; but in proving the corpus delicti circumstantial evidence is competent as in proof of other elements of the crime. It has sometimes happened that a defendant has been convicted of murder in the first degree upon a circumstantial and detailed confession of the murder on his part, when in fact no murder had been committed. In view of these circumstances, the rule became established that the death of the supposed victim must be established by other evidence than the confession of the defendant. Afterwards the rule was so extended as to require independent evidence that the death of the victim was by violence and not self-inflicted. Many details are suggested in the brief as elements of the corpus delicti which have never been so considered. If there is evidence, direct or circumstantial, other than the confession of the defendant, that the person alleged to have been murdered was killed by violence not self-inflicted, the corpus delicti is sufficiently proved.

Mr Heelan and his wife and daughter resided on a ranch in Cherry county, and in the summer or fall of 1915 this defendant began working for Mr. Heelan on the ranch, and on the 13th of October it was necessary for Mr. Heelan to be away from home for a short time, and Mrs. Heelan procured a neighbor, Mrs. Layport, to stay with her over night in Mr. Heelan's absence. In the evening the dwelling house was burned, and the bodies of Mrs. Heelan and Mrs. Layport were found in the ruins. A search was immediately made for the defendant, and he was apprehended at Valentine the next morning. He freely confessed the murder, and answered, under oath, without hesitation, the questions that were put to him in regard to it, and finally, when his statement had been reduced to writing, he read it and signed it as a correct statement of the manner in which the crime was committed. In this statement he said that he had been hauling hay and coal the day prior to the murder, and he used four horses in hauling coal. While so engaged he met the two women, Mrs. Heelan and Mrs. Layport, and told Mrs. Heelan that one of the horses had been sick, "and she told me I ought to have known better than to drive a sick horse. * * * Right after the women got home we had more talk about the horse, and I got very angry. The two women got some mail, and were sitting at the table in the kitchen reading the mail, along about nine o'clock. I was out on the back porch thinking things over. I was very angry about the way she had talked to me about the horse, and the more I thought about it the more angry I got. I had a feeling that I must have revenge. The gun, a double-barrel 12-gauge shot gun, was out in the barn. I decided while on the porch that I would go get the gun and kill both of the women. I went out to the barn and loaded the gun, and came back to the window at the southeast corner of the kitchen, and while Mrs. Heelan was reading a newspaper at the northeast corner of the table I shot her in the head. She was killed instantly. I then stepped inside the door and shot Mrs. Layport in the head; she was stooped over near the sink in the kitchen when I shot her. I then wrote the note which was found in the barn, and took it out and left it." He then set fire to the dwelling house in which these two women were, and took one of the horses and rode to Arabia, and stayed there about an hour, and then to Woodlake, and from there by freight train to Valentine. He intended to leave on the railroad the next day, but was arrested by the sheriff. The statement continued: "After killing the women I took some money, a little more than a dollar, out of Mrs. Layport's handbag, and also took Mrs. Layport's watch, from up-stairs, and took it along with me. I also took Mrs. Heelan's rosary. This was down-stairs on the sewing machine when I got it. I also took a comb and a prayer book from down-stairs. There was just the two women and myself present at the time I shot them." This statement was extrajudicial, and would be subject to the suggestion above that it could not of itself be sufficient to establish the corpus delicti. The defendant, however, offered himself as a witness upon the trial, and...