Heddendorf v. State
| Decision Date | 05 January 1910 |
| Docket Number | 16,202 |
| Citation | 124 N.W. 150,85 Neb. 747 |
| Parties | BENJAMIN HEDDENDORF v. STATE OF NEBRASKA |
| Court | Nebraska Supreme Court |
ERROR to the district court for Harlan county: HARRY S. DUNGAN JUDGE. Reversed.
REVERSED.
J. G Thompson, John Everson and Perry, Lambe & Butler, for plaintiff in error.
W. T Thompson, Attorney General, and George W. Ayres, contra.
In a prosecution by the state in the district court for Harlan county, Benjamin Heddendorf, defendant, was convicted of murder in the first degree and sentenced to life imprisonment. As plaintiff in error he now presents for review the record of his conviction.
In the information and testimony William C. Dillon is described as the victim of the homicide. He was a bachelor, and lived alone on his farm north of the village of Stamford in Harlan county, and was found dead in his house there. Circumstances indicated that, when sitting in his own home, he had been shot through a window from a position outside. A pane of glass in the window had been broken and a blanket hung over the aperture. There was a wound on the right side of Dillon's head above and back of the ear. His watch was missing and some of his pockets had the appearance of having been rifled. He was last seen alive March 17, 1909. The felony was discovered March 19, 1909. Suspicion as to the malefactors fell on two boys in the neighborhood and they were arrested March 20, 1909. George Critser was one of the boys and the convicted defendant herein was the other.
At the trial the state was permitted to prove that defendant had confessed his guilt, and it is earnestly argued that the district court erred in admitting the confession and in instructing the jury in relation to it. One of defendant's objections to the confession is that the evidence does not exclude the hypothesis that it was involuntary, and the instructions are criticized on the ground that they permitted the jury to consider the confession as competent evidence of guilt, though it was made in the presence of the county attorney under circumstances making it inadmissible. In examining these questions it will be necessary to advert to some features of the testimony. Defendant lived on a farm with his parents near the scene of the homicide. When arrested he was a boy of eighteen. His parents at the time were visiting in Iowa, and in their absence Critser was with defendant and assisted the latter in doing chores and other farm work. There was some testimony tending to show that defendant was weak-minded, and his conversation impressed one witness as that of a boy of ten or eleven. Defendant had been watching bloodhounds at work the day he was arrested, and in this connection the deputy sheriff testified: The officers and bloodhounds were at defendant's home, and he was arrested there the same day in the absence of his parents and taken with Critser to Stamford to the offices of a real estate agent. These offices consisted of one large front room into which two small back rooms opened. Here the boys were separated, each being detained in one of the small rooms in custody of the sheriff or his deputy. According to some of the witnesses the boys were thus detained for more than two hours. The county attorney was called, and went back and forth from one of the small offices to the other through the front room. An uncle of defendant testified that the front office and porch were crowded. He also said there was a good deal of excitement, and that the sheriff kept him out of the room in which his nephew was confined. It is conceded that defendant first denied his guilt. One witness said the boy appeared to be nervous and cried before making the confession. It was on the day of his arrest, in one of the back rooms described, that the confession admitted in evidence was first made. Defendant did not have the benefit of counsel until the next day. In one instance the county attorney's version of what took place after he left the room occupied by Critser and approached defendant in the other room is as follows: The statement that "the other boy has wilted" was untrue, and without knowing its falsity defendant is said to have confessed his guilt. After the county attorney went out, defendant, according to the testimony of the deputy sheriff in charge, said: "If the other boy has wilted, I will tell it all too." One witness said the first question asked by the county attorney was: "You may as well make a clean breast of it, for it will come out anyway, and it will be better for you." The same witness also testified in regard to the confession that Dr. Campbell asked and defendant answered questions as follows: "
There is proof of these conditions, incidents and circumstances but the evidence in regard to some of them is conflicting. As they have been stated they are not intended as a summary of the testimony, but are mentioned to show the premises from which defendant makes two arguments. The first of these is that, under the stress of the events described, defendant's mind was seized with fear, and that his mental condition was such that the influence and conduct of the officers destroyed his confession as competent evidence of his guilt; and the second is that it was the duty of the court, after having admitted the confession in evidence, to instruct the jury to disregard it, if found by them to be involuntary. The admission of the confession was resisted every...
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