Grant v. Commonwealth

• Decision Date: 03 July 1872
• Citation: 71 Pa. 495
• Parties: Grant <I>versus</I> The Commonwealth.
• Court: Pennsylvania Supreme Court

Page 495

71 Pa. 495

Grant versus The Commonwealth.

Supreme Court of Pennsylvania.

May 27, 1872.

July 3, 1872.

May 27th 1872.

Before THOMPSON, C. J., READ, AGNEW, SHARSWOOD and WILLIAMS, JJ.

Error to the Court of Oyer and Terminer of Chester county: (Eastern District.) Of July Term, 1872.

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N. Strickland, Jr., and W. B. Waddell, for plaintiff in error.

G. F. Smith, District Attorney, for the Commonwealth.

The opinion of the court was delivered, July 3d 1872, by THOMPSON, C. J.

The plaintiff in error in this case was indicted and convicted in the court below, of the crime of murder in killing one Amanda R. Spence, by shooting her, and his case has been brought up for review under the provisions of the Act of Assembly of the 15th February 1870. The act allows a writ of error as of right "in all cases of murder and voluntary manslaughter," and defines our duty to be "to review both the law and the evidence, and to determine whether the ingredients necessary to constitute murder in the first degree shall have been proved to exist; and if not so proved, then to reverse the judgment, and send the same back for a new trial, or to enter such judgment as the laws of this Commonwealth require."

We have listened to the able and zealous argument of the prisoner's counsel as if on a motion for a new trial; we could find no fault with that, for it in fact was a method of showing that the ingredients of murder in the first degree had not been proved. But our duty under the Act is widely different. A court on hearing a motion for a new trial, judges of the action of the jury on the testimony on both sides, and considers whether too much or too little weight has been given to features for the whole of the testimony in view of its intrinsic character; the manner in which it has been given by the witnesses, their apparent bias, intelligence or want of it, and character. All this has been before and under the eye of the court, and they can say on a calm reconsideration of it all, whether justice does, or does not, require a new trial. This court cannot do this, and the Act of Assembly does not contemplate any such thing. Our duty is to see whether there was evidence given in the case, which, if believed by the jury, would furnish the elements, or "ingredients," as the act says, of murder in the first degree, under our statutes on the subject, viz.: the corpus delicti, either "killing by poison, lying in wait, or by any other kind of wilful, deliberate and premeditated killing, or which shall be committed in the perpetration or attempted perpetration of any arson, rape, robbery or burglary." To this extent is the duty devolved on this court of reviewing the facts in cases of convictions for murder in the first degree, by the Act of 1870. It goes no further towards enabling it to grant new trials. If there have appeared in the testimony the ingredients to constitute murder in the first degree, our power ceases. Whether the jury should or should not have believed and relied on it, is what this court cannot examine into. That must be inquired of on a motion for a new trial in the court below, as formerly.

We have examined the testimony given in this case as returned by the learned judge below, and in our opinion it discloses every ingredient necessary under the law, to constitute murder in the first degree, and to connect the prisoner with the performance of the wicked deed. That the jury believed the evidence is conclusively shown by their verdict. We do not mean to recapitulate it minutely. The corpus delicti was clearly shown, and not controverted by the prisoner. The life of the deceased was taken by shooting her at or near her own kitchen-door, in the night time, and the instrument of death was a peculiar sort of firearm or pistol, constructed out of an army rifle, and was found lying near the body. The ownership of the pistol was traced to the prisoner, and testimony was given to show that he picked or scraped, and capped the nipple, that evening shortly before the murder; that there was an old grudge in the mind of the prisoner towards the...