Goodwin v. State

• Decision Date: 17 April 1883
• Docket Number: 9675
• Parties: Goodwin v. The State
• Court: Indiana Supreme Court

96 Ind. 550

Goodwin v. The State

No. 9675

Supreme Court of Indiana

April 17, 1883

Rehearing Date: June 28, 1884

Reported at: 96 Ind. 550 at 572.

From the Franklin Circuit Court.

Judgment affirmed.

J. W. Gordon, R. N. Lamb, S. M. Shepard and S. S. Harrell, for appellant.

F. T. Hord, Attorney General, and B. Burke, Prosecuting Attorney, for the State.

OPINION

Elliott, J.

The appellant was convicted of murder in the first degree, and sentenced to the State's prison for life. The evidence conclusively proves that he shot to death his brother, John R. Goodwin, and the only question for the decision of the jury which, under the evidence, fairly admitted of dispute, was as to the mental condition of the accused at the time the homicide was committed.

Threats of the accused to shoot his brother, made thirty years before the homicide, when the former was a lad of fifteen, were proved, and the ruling of the court admitting this evidence is assailed as erroneous. There was other evidence of long continued hostility of the accused towards the deceased, and it can not be said, as matter of law, that ill-will may not begin in boyhood and continue into the years of manhood. The existence and continuance of malevolent feelings was a question of fact, and it was proper to submit to the jury all evidence bearing upon that question, leaving to them the decision of its credibility and weight.

Threats against life are always admissible against an accused, but their remoteness from the time of the homicide is a circumstance to be considered in determining the weight and effect to be assigned them. People v. Cronin, 34 Cal. 191; State v. Ford, 3 Strob. (S.C.) 517; Keener v. State, 18 Ga. 194.

Witnesses were allowed to state the contents of a letter written by the accused, wherein he directed the person to whom it was addressed to get his pistol from his brother, and retain it until his return from the place where the letter was written. There was no error in admitting this evidence. The foundation for the admission of secondary evidence had been laid by proof of the destruction of the letter, and the only question is as to the relevancy of the testimony. It is always proper to give evidence of the preparation for crime, such as the purchase or procurement of weapons, and it was not, therefore, improper to give evidence tending to show that some time before the homicide the accused took measures to secure a deadly weapon. It was proper to allow the evidence of the direction to secure and retain the pistol to go to the jury, and in so ruling the court did not decide anything as to the weight and effect of such evidence. In adjudging that evidence is competent, the court does not, as counsel assume, instruct the jury that it is to influence their decision; the court does no more than declare that the evidence is entitled to be heard; all else is left to the judgment of the jury.

Where the declarations of an accused are susceptible of two interpretations, one consistent with innocence, the other indicative of guilt, they are admissible in evidence. Attendant circumstances or connected facts may greatly modify, and, indeed, completely change, the meaning and effect of ambiguous expressions. Such declarations are to be considered in connection with all the other evidence in the case and are to be interpreted by the light it throws upon them.

Counsel are in error in assuming that the court in ruling that such declarations are admissible decides that they shall receive an interpretation inconsistent with innocence. The ruling has no such effect, for it extends no further than a decision that they shall be heard and considered in connection with the other evidence, leaving to the jury the duty of annexing to them their just signification.

The court refused to permit one of the appellant's witnesses to answer this question: "If the defendant was different from other people in his manner of living, or acting, or speaking, or eating, state in what respect?" In this there was no error. The question opened entirely too wide a field of investigation. The sanest men differ in their habits of life and conduct, and no good could have resulted from entering upon such a boundless field of inquiry. Criminal responsibility is not measured by men's peculiarities of habit, or eccentricities in modes of living. Comparisons such as that which the question called upon the witness to make would embarrass and perplex juries, rather than assist and enlighten them. The counsel were allowed to elicit from the witness not only an opinion of the mental condition of appellant, but also a full account of his habits, conduct and declarations, and thus received all the benefit from the witness's testimony that they had any right to ask.

There was no error in refusing to permit one of the expert witnesses called by the appellant to give the jury a definition of the word "monomania." It is not proper to ask witnesses to define words which have a fixed and well known signification, except, perhaps, in cross-examination.

It is contended with great earnestness and ability that the prosecutor, in propounding a hypothetical question to an expert witness, where insanity is the point in issue, must embody in his question all the matters of which there is any evidence; in other words, that the whole case must be embodied in the assumption made in the question of the examining counsel. In support of this contention we are referred to People v. Thurston, 2 Park. Cr. C. 49. We are unwilling to follow that case, for we are firmly convinced that it is unsound in principle, incapable of just application in practice, and unsanctioned by authority. A doctrine which requires a prosecutor to assume and embody in one question conflicting testimony can not be defended on any ground consistent with sound reason. It would operate unjustly in practice, because it would impose upon an examining counsel the necessity of assuming as true that which he denies in fact, and thus the jury would be confused and perplexed by an apparent admission of facts antagonistic to the theory of the prosecution. It would require the court, whenever an objection was interposed, to determine what facts were proved, and what were not, and thus compel an invasion of the province of the jury. It would produce endless wrangling and confusion, darken and obscure the investigation of the recondite subject of mental capacity, and place the falsest testimony and the absurdest statements on an equality with the truest and most reasonable. On the other hand, no harm can be done the accused by holding that the examining counsel may assume such a case as the evidence in his judgment makes out, and which keeps within the range of the relevant testimony, because the prisoner's counsel may, on cross-examination, add to the hypothetical case supposed by the prosecutor, such facts as he deems the evidence to have established, or subtract from it such facts as he supposes to have been disproved, or not to have been proved. We are not without decisions in our reports. In Bishop v. Spining, 38 Ind. 143, Worden, C. J., admirably stated the rule: "The party seeking an opinion in such case may, within reasonable limits, put his case hypothetically as he claims it to have been proved, and take the opinion of the witness thereon, leaving the jury, of course, to determine whether the hypothetical case put is the real one proved." This doctrine is asserted in the cases of Guetig v. State, 66 Ind. 94, Nave v. Tucker, 70 Ind. 15, Davis v. State, 35 Ind. 496 (9 Am. R. 760), and is well sustained by the decisions of other States, as the citations given by Wharton in his work on criminal evidence abundantly show. We find in the case of Cowley v. People, 83 N.Y. 464 (38 Am. R. 464), a statement of the rule which deserves repetition. In speaking of a hypothetical question the court said: "The very meaning of the word is that it supposes, assumes something for the time being. Each side, in an issue of fact, has its theory of what is the true state of the facts, and assumes that it can prove it to be so to the satisfaction of the jury; and so assuming, shapes hypothetical questions to experts accordingly. And such is the correct practice." Guiterman v. Liverpool, etc., Co., 83 N.Y. 358.

It was not error to refuse permission to ask a non-expert witness whether the accused could control his appetite for intoxicating liquor. Men who are not insane must control their appetites and passions. With quite as much propriety might a witness be asked in a case of rape whether the accused could control his lustful desire, and with just as much reason might a witness be asked whether a prisoner could control his anger or master his desire for revenge, and to permit such things to excuse crime would be to break down all law and set a premium on masterful evil passions. While the law shields from punishment one who does an act when insane from the continued use of intoxicating liquor, it does not permit him to set up his voluntary drunkenness as an excuse for taking human life. If the rule for which counsel contends should prevail, then the common drunkard, whose appetite controls his mind and will, may with impunity commit the gravest crimes, but, happily, the law is subject to no such reproach. Cluck v. State, 40 Ind. 263; Gillooley v. State, 58 Ind. 182; Bradley v. State, 31 Ind. 492; People v. Ferris, 2 Crim. L. Mag. 18; State v. Hundley, 46 Mo. 414; Carter v. State, 12 Tex. 500; U. S. v. McGlue, 1 Curtis C. C. 1.

The question in this case was not whether the appellant could refrain from strong drink, but whether he was insane when he slew his brother. If, however, the question had been the power of the accused to refrain from the use...