Fritz v. State
| Decision Date | 07 November 1912 |
| Docket Number | 22,206 |
| Citation | 99 N.E. 727,178 Ind. 463 |
| Parties | Fritz v. State of Indiana |
| Court | Indiana Supreme Court |
From Clark Circuit Court, Harry C. Montgomery, Judge.
Prosecution by the State of Indiana against John Fritz. From a judgment of conviction, the defendant appeals.
Reversed.
E. C Hughes, for appellant.
Thomas M. Honan, Attorney-General, Thomas H. Branaman, Edwin Corr and James E. McCullough, for the State.
Appellant was convicted of murder in the first degree, the jury fixing as punishment therefor the death penalty.
On September 2, 1907, appellant, then a boy little past sixteen years of age, was sentenced to the Indiana Reformatory to serve an indeterminate term of from one to fourteen years for grand larceny. His early life had been hard. His home surroundings were not good. He had worked in the stone quarries from the age of ten years, with companion laborers whose association had no tendency to refine his character. He had little schooling. His father and one brother were in the state prison for a crime of violence. Another brother was an inmate of the Indiana Reformatory. During the period of his confinement appellant's health was not good, and he suffered from numerous ailments, some of them serious. For the first two years of his indeterminate term his deportment was good and his prison record clean. The first report against him was October 20, 1909, for having tobacco in his possession, and for that offense sixty days were taken off his "good time." Other offenses of varying kinds, against the discipline of the institution followed after this, which were met with punishments, from deprivation of "good time" to a severe form of solitary confinement. His infractions of discipline increased. On November 20, 1911, he told Hiram B. McWilliams, a guard, that he was sick. McWilliams sent him to the doctor, who found him ailing, but, he claimed, not sick enough to cease his work. On the afternoon of the following day, while appellant was at work in the chair shop and McWilliams was on duty there sitting at the officer's station, appellant suddenly left his bench, grasped a hammer, walked over to McWilliams, struck him twice on the head with it, and killed him. There had been no trouble between them that day, and before that McWilliams had treated appellant kindly. He had before reported breaches of discipline on appellant's part on two occasions, once about two years before, but other officers had reported him more times.
Counsel for appellant makes no claim that there was any defense for appellant to the charge of murder in the first degree, except on the ground that at the time of the commission of the act resulting in McWilliams' death appellant was insane. And on this issue testimony was given for and against appellant.
One of the errors assigned and relied on for a reversal of the judgment of the trial court is the overruling of appellant's motion for a new trial. The giving of instruction number three by the court on its own motion was assigned as a cause for a new trial, and it is earnestly contended by counsel for appellant that it should work a reversal of the case. This instruction is as follows:
The Attorney-General very properly concedes that the instruction was erroneous. It was clearly error to tell the jury "to give the verdict to the side on which predominates the weight of the evidence." One cannot be convicted of even a minor crime or misdemeanor merely by a preponderance of the evidence. Nor can a defendant be required to prove himself guiltless by a preponderance of the evidence. On the one hand, the evidence against one charged with a crime must prove every element of the offense beyond a reasonable doubt before there can be a conviction; and on the other the evidence favorable to the accused need only be sufficient to raise a reasonable doubt of the establishment of any one essential element of the crime, to require an acquittal. § 2137 Burns 1908, Acts 1905 p. 584, § 261; Hiler v. State (1838), 4 Blackf. 552; Hipp v. State (1839), 5 Blackf. 149, 33 Am. Dec. 463; Wade v. State (1880), 71 Ind. 535; Plummer v. State (1893), 135 Ind. 308, 34 N.E. 968; Hinshaw v. State (1897), 147 Ind. 334, 379, 47 N.E. 157; Hauk v. State (1897), 148 Ind. 238, 254, 46 N.E. 127, 47 N.E. 465; Osburn v. State (1905), 164 Ind. 262, 271, 73 N.E. 601.
It is axiomatic that without a criminal intent there is no crime, and without mental capacity for it there can be no criminal intent. Appellant's sanity, mental capacity to form the intent to kill, was, if in issue, an essential element of the offense with which he was charged. This element the State was bound to prove beyond a reasonable doubt, and not merely by a preponderance of the evidence. The evidence of appellant's insanity need not predominate in weight over that going to show his sanity, if the jury found it sufficient to raise a reasonable doubt of his sanity, the law requires an acquittal. Polk v. State (1862), 19 Ind. 170, 81 Am. Dec. 382; Stevens v. State (1869), 31 Ind. 485, 99 Am. Dec. 634; Guetig v. State (1879), 66 Ind. 94, 32 Am. Rep. 99; McDougal v. State (1882), 88 Ind. 24; Plake v. State (1890), 121 Ind. 433, 23 N.E. 273, 16 Am. St. 408; Plummer v. State (1893), 135 Ind. 308, 320, 34 N.E. 968.
But a reversal of the cause is sought to be avoided by an earnest contention by the Attorney-General that the error did not harm appellant. Were the question of appellant's sanity eliminated, this position of counsel for the State could hardly be successfully combated, for it is conceded by counsel for appellant that there is no real conflict in the evidence except on the question of appellant's sanity, and it would seem that with this not involved, every fact necessary to constitute murder in the first degree was established, with no conflicting evidence.
It is the claim of the Attorney-General that no question of appellant's insanity or any evidence relating to it can be considered, for the reason that that question was not raised under the issues. Section 198 of the code of criminal procedure (Acts 1905 p. 584, § 2069 Burns 1908) provides that under the general issue of not guilty pleaded orally any matter of defense may be proved except insanity. Section 199 of said act (§ 2070 Burns 1908) provides that when a defendant desires to plead that he was of unsound mind at the time the offense was committed, he himself or his counsel must set up such a defense specially in writing, and the...
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