Doughty v. State, Criminal 803
| Decision Date | 25 June 1934 |
| Docket Number | Criminal 803 |
| Citation | 44 Ariz. 100,33 P.2d 991 |
| Parties | WILLARD DOUGHTY, Appellant, v. STATE, Respondent |
| Court | Arizona Supreme Court |
APPEAL from a judgment of the Superior Court of the County of Yuma. Henry C. Kelly, Judge. Judgment affirmed.
Mr James B. Rolle, Jr., and Mr. James Forest, for Appellant.
Mr Arthur T. La Prade, Attorney General, Mr. John Francis Connor, Assistant Attorney General, and Mr. Glenn Copple County Attorney, for the State.
Willard Doughty, hereinafter called appellant, was charged jointly with Dan O'Connell and Louis Sprague Douglass with the murder of one Ralph Hart. On this charge, a severance having been demanded, appellant went to trial and the jury returned a verdict of guilty of murder in the second degree, and he was sentenced to serve from twenty-five to fifty years in prison. From such sentence and the verdict this appeal is prosecuted.
The undisputed facts are as follows: Doughty, O'Connell and Douglass left New York City in the early part of January 1933, for northern Yuma county, where there was a mining property known as the Good Hope Mining & Exploration Company, in which the wife and brother of Douglass were interested. Ralph Hart and J. G. Hayden were also interested in the mine and lived near by. When appellant and his companions arrived they set up their camp close to the dwellings of Hart and Hayden, remaining for about ten days, when they departed together in appellant's automobile for Phoenix, Arizona. A few days later the bodies of Hart and Hayden were found buried close to their residence, and bearing physical evidence that they had been killed by gunshot wounds of such a nature that a reasonable man might well believe the killing was murder. A short time later appellant and his companions were arrested in New York City and returned to Yuma county for trial.
At the trial the state introduced evidence tending to show, in addition to the undisputed facts above set forth, that when appellant and his companions were in Phoenix on their way from Yuma to New York, and after the killing of Hart and Hayden, the appellant sold his automobile and a large amount of personal property to Bill Davenport, a dealer in second-hand automobiles in Phoenix, and that among this personal property were a number of articles which had belonged to Hart and Hayden during their lifetime.
It further appeared that after appellant and his companions were returned to Yuma county and held in jail there pending trial, he wrote a number of letters which he gave surreptitiously to a trusty, with the request that they be delivered to Douglass and O'Connell. These letters, taken together, could well be construed by a reasonable man as an attempt to induce Douglass and O'Connell to frame a false defense for all three of the parties. The evidence aforesaid, while entirely circumstantial in its nature, was undoubtedly sufficient to take the case to the jury.
In defense Douglass, O'Connell and appellant all took the stand, and their story was, in substance, that Douglass had killed Hayden in self-defense; that thereafter the three had planned to tie up Hart so that he might not discover and reveal the killing of Hayden, and started to carry out such design, but at the last minute the hearts of appellant and O'Connell failed them, and they desisted from such plan, but that Douglass engaged in an altercation with Hart and, as he claims, shot him in self-defense.
There are several assignments of error which we will consider in their order. The first is that there was no evidence on the part of the state to support a conviction of murder in the first degree, or any of the offenses embodied in an information charging such murder. A mere review of the evidence stated as aforesaid is sufficient to show the fallacy of this assignment. According to the evidence adduced by the state, appellant and his companions were for some time living close to the home of Hart and Hayden. They left there suddenly, and a few days after the bodies of Hart and Hayden were discovered buried under circumstances showing that they had been killed about the time appellant and his companions left, and that the killing was not justifiable or excusable. Shortly after their leaving, they were found together...
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...in his contention before the court. State v. Smith, 218 N.C. 334, 11 S.E.2d 165; U. S. v. Freundlich, 2 Cir., 95 F.2d 376; Doughty v. State, 44 Ariz. 100, 33 P.2d 991; Drake v. Commonwealth, 214 Ky. 147, 282 S.W. 1066; Perfect v. State, 197 Ind. 401, 141 N.E. 52; Commonwealth v. Min Sing, 2......
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...Milke this version of what happened so that it might come out at his trial and corroborate his own testimony. See Doughty v. State, 44 Ariz. 100, 103, 33 P.2d 991, 992 (1934) (letter written by defendant to co-defendants in jail indicated that defense offered at trial was not true and was f......
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