Flowers v. State

• Decision Date: 03 November 1924
• Docket Number: Criminal 584
• Citation: 229 P. 1028,27 Ariz. 70
• Parties: SAM FLOWERS, Appellant, v. STATE, Respondent
• Court: Arizona Supreme Court

229 P. 1028

27 Ariz. 70

SAM FLOWERS, Appellant, v. STATE, Respondent

Criminal No. 584

Supreme Court of Arizona

November 3, 1924

APPEAL from a judgment of the Superior Court of the County of Pima. George R. Darnell, Judge. Affirmed.

Mr James D. Barry and Mr. John H. Martin, for Appellant.

Mr John W. Murphy, Attorney General, and Mr. A. R. Lynch, Mr Earl Anderson, and Mr. E. W. McFarland, Assistant Attorneys General, for the State.

OPINION

ROSS, J.

Defendant appeals from a conviction of murder and a death sentence, and also from an order overruling his motion for a new trial. Upon his trial he admitted he committed the homicide, but claimed he did it in self-defense.

The deceased, the defendant, and all of the eyewitnesses to the killing are colored people; defendant and deceased being husband and wife. They were married in 1915 in Texas, and came to Tucson, Arizona, in 1919. According to defendant's story their married life had been neither happy nor peaceful. They had quarreled and fought, made up, and quarreled and fought again, at irregular intervals during their entire married life. It was five or six months after their marriage that the deceased assaulted defendant with a razor and inflicted on his neck a serious wound. Another half year passed, when he escaped the same or worse treatment from the deceased by outrunning her as she pursued him with a butcher-knife. Later he was saved from being shot by the police intercepting his wife and taking from her a pistol. In 1918, because defendant wanted to go to Wichita Falls on business, deceased went to the train, where she found him, and with a pistol in her hand "ran him four or five miles up the railroad track until the train left."

These are not by any means all the troubles of their married life. They are only a few, according to defendant's testimony. Their troubles continued until on February 20, 1923, defendant put a stop to them by shooting his wife to death in the manner stated a little further on.

As a result of their difficulties, they separated frequently, and lived apart a large portion of the eight years of their married life.

At the time of the homicide defendant was employed at the Congress Hotel, in Tucson, as night porter, where he had been working for some time. The deceased was cooking, and had been cooking, for one Florence Marquis, from some time in December, 1922. At this time they were not living together, although they frequently met. It is shown that defendant quite often went to the Marquis place, where deceased was cooking, and had meals with her, and one time was there nursed through a slight illness.

Defendant claimed that Florence Marquis was running an assignation house, or house of prostitution, and the evidence, we think, pretty conclusively established that as a fact. The defendant assigned that as the reason he objected to his wife working there. The deceased, shortly before February 20th, saw a local justice of the peace, and asked that defendant be put under a peace bond. On the afternoon or evening of the 19th of February, defendant, after seeing the justice of the peace, called upon the Marquis place over the telephone, and when it was answered by Florence Marquis, he asked her (so he says) "what she meant by putting me under a peace bond." Whereupon Florence Marquis answered, "Because she (deceased) don't want you, and is going to have you run out of town." That night, and after this conversation, defendant wrote deceased, and caused to be delivered to her by messenger, the following letter:

"Hello Mrs. Flowers cind frend how are you this morning this leave me felling afuly sore with you as you are trying to make peple think that I am trying to force you to live with me I only told you that I would not stand for you to live there an if you was a woman you be to glad to now that I had that much respect for you must lest that in erther words I want you to quit telling peple that I am going to kill you I told you that killing was to good for you so as you think that Ted (Florence Marquis was also known as Ted) has the Law in her power an can have me put under a peas bond that allwright I Will see about that you had her to ring the jesters (justice) but that all OK that shows what Controll that woman has of you I sent for you an told you jest what I meant an you said that you would leave so I told you that that would suit me so you Wanted to go Sunday an I told you to wain untill monday so you agreed an then you went Back and told Tedy (Florence Marquis) that I said that I was going to kill you but Dont forget What said about you staying there I Dont mean to hurt you Either but this is something must rite to all the old friends and tell them about so I say hello and good by S.F. you will need me before I will you and Dont forget that old friend."

In the afternoon or evening of the 20th, defendant called deceased over the telephone, and this conversation took place:

"So I asked her was she busy. She says she was at the time. I asked her if she was going to be busy all night, if she wasn't I wanted to see her. So she said she suspected she would be busy. So we passed a few other words, I don't remember what they were, but she said, 'Good-by,' so I hung up."

The time of this telephone conversation was not given, but it was after 4 P.M., as defendant says he slept until that hour. He says he was drinking during that afternoon, so that when his hour to go to work (7 P.M.) arrived, because his boss had forbidden his working while intoxicated, he got another man to take his place for the night, and that he left the hotel about 7:15. It was 8:30 or 9 o'clock when he arrived at 136 West McCormick Street, where the killing took place. This place was occupied by a negro family, with whom both the defendant and the deceased were on friendly terms. Defendant had been there at about 5 o'clock that afternoon, and had talked to some of the occupants. When he called at this place the second time, the deceased was there visiting. Beside her there were two other women and one man in the house, sitting around the dining-table in the dining-room. Their names were Jeanette Adams, Hattie Johnson and Aaron Watson. This room was the second room from the front door entrance.

The state's evidence is that the front door was locked by means of a sliding bolt, and that a crash of glass being broken was heard; the door having a glass panel. The evidence was that a glass square, about six by six inches, just over the doorknob, was broken; the glass being upon the floor. Immediately after the crash was heard, the defendant appeared in the room where all these people were sitting. The deceased had just taken into her hands a pad and pencil, preparatory to writing a letter for Hattie Johnson. She had written the words, "Tucson, Arizona." She was sitting at the time. The defendant said to her, "Mrs. Flowers, I can't get to speak to you, can I?" at the time drawing his pistol and shooting her twice while she was still sitting, and several times after she had risen, emptying his pistol into or at her body.

The defendant's version is that he did not know his wife was in the house; that he was admitted by one of the inmates; that he greeted everybody in a friendly way, and turning to his wife upbraided her for refusing over the telephone earlier in the evening to see him; that she jumped up and threw down a book, or whatever she had in her hands; that everybody then jumped up, and that Hattie Johnson knocked him back on a trunk; that he got up off of trunk, and his wife was coming at him with her hands in her bosom, and he "just pulled his pistol out of his pocket and began shooting."

The deceased was shot (1) midway between the nipples, through the breast-bone, (2) in the left arm, fracturing the humerus, (3) three times to the left of the umbilicus, taking a downward course to the right, and (4) there were three gunshot wounds in the right hand.

Policemen Barton and Smith heard the shots, and were at the scene very quickly thereafter. Defendant surrendered without resistance, and gave over to them his pistol. He said to them:

"Everything is all right, I just killed my wife. She has been living with a whore."

Policeman Barton, who took defendant to jail, said:

"He told me that he was sorry that he didn't catch his wife and Frenchy, this woman known as Florence Marquis. He was sorry that he didn't catch the two of them together, so he could kill the two of them. And then I asked him, when he used this word 'frenchy,' I says, 'who do you mean?' And he says, 'florence Marquis.'"

After the body of deceased was removed to an undertaker's, there was found under and inside her clothing near the skin at the waist line a razor.

With the above statement of facts in mind, we will now take up and pass upon the assignments of error.

It is contended that the court erred in refusing to allow defendant to prove by a record from a Texas district court that deceased had been indicted for murder, and tried, convicted and sentenced to five years' imprisonment in a Texas penitentiary. We have looked through the transcript of the evidence as taken down by the court reporter and do not find any record of any such offer of proof. The trial was had on May 22d and 23d, 1923. Among the...