Hinshaw v. State

• Decision Date: 02 April 1897
• Citation: 147 Ind. 334,47 N.E. 157
• Parties: HINSHAW v. STATE.
• Court: Indiana Supreme Court

147 Ind. 334

47 N.E. 157

HINSHAW

v.STATE.

Supreme Court of Indiana.

April 2, 1897.

Appeal from circuit court, Hendricks county; John V. Hadley, Judge.

William E. Hinshaw was convicted of murder, and appeals. Affirmed.Duncan, Smith & Hornbrook, James O. Parker, and Hogate & Clark, for appellant. W. A. Ketcham, Atty. Gen., and C. C. Hadley, for the State.

McCABE, J.

The appellant was indicted in the Hendricks circuit court for murder in the first degree in the alleged killing of his wife, Thirza Hinshaw, in the county of Hendricks, on the 10th day of January, 1895. He was put upon the trial of said charge before a jury on September 4, 1895, which was concluded on October 12th next thereafter, resulting in a verdict finding him guilty of murder in the second degree, and prescribing his punishment therefor at imprisonment in the state prison during his life. Afterwards the court rendered judgment on the verdict, sentencing the appellant to imprisonment for and during his natural life. The appellant assigns for error in this court only the action of the circuit court in overruling his motion to quash the indictment and in overruling his motion for a new trial. The first ground of alleged error is abandoned and waived by the appellant in not mentioning in his brief or oral argument the subject of the sufficiency of the indictment, or the action of the trial court in refusing to quash it. A large number of specifications of error are named in the motion for a new trial as ground therefor. All of such alleged errors that are pointed out and argued in appellant's brief we will notice as we proceed.

The first ground of the motion for new trial presented in appellant's brief, and the first in importance of all the questions presented by the record and briefs, is the forty-fourth and last ground specified in the motion for a new trial, namely, that the verdict is contrary to the law and the evidence. Under this specification the only contention of appellant's learned counsel is that the evidence is insufficient to support the verdict. As to the killing of Mrs. Hinshaw at the time and place charged, there is no controversy whatever. But as to who killed her the evidence is all circumstantial. And upon this point the learned counsel for appellant say: “And here our first proposition is that, were we to concede as actually established against the appellant every fact from which it is claimed that the inference of guilt could arise as to which there was any evidence whatever, and to consider as established in his favor only such facts as to which there is absolutely no conflict in the evidence, that acting upon this hypothesis, the facts thus considered as established do not exclude every reasonable hypothesis of the innocence of the appellant; but, upon the contrary, taking all the facts included in such hypothesis as actually existing, it is in the highest degree unreasonable to suppose that the appellant did maliciously kill and murder his wife. That there are other theories as to how she came to her death more reasonable than the theory that he murdered her.” Briefly stated, the known circumstances of the killing are, in substance, as follows: The appellant was born and raised on a farm in Randolph county, in this state. After he reached 21 years of age, he taught school in winter, and farmed or helped his father farm during the summer season. On February 24, 1887, he was married in that county to Thirza Oiler, who had been reared upon a farm in said county, and whom he had known since he was 13 years old. He continued to reside in Randolph county, thus occupied, until the fall of 1892, when he removed to the town of Belleville, in Hendricks county, and for two years taught the public schools there. In September, 1894, he entered the ministry of the Methodist Episcopal Church, and was assigned to the Belleville circuit as such minister, and continued to preach therein until the time of the death of his wife, on January 10, 1895. A great number of witnesses who had known him and his wife intimately, including her mother, brothers, and sisters, his father and mother, and their neighbors, testified without exception to the uniform happiness of their married life, their constant kindness, courtesy, and apparent affection for each other. Appellant's circuit included the charges of Belleville, Cherry Grove, Stilesville, and Salem. On the Sunday preceding January 10, 1895, he began a “protracted meeting” at Cherry Grove. Appellant preached on Sunday night, and returned to his home in Belleville; his wife being with him. On Monday night he drove to Cherry Grove, preached, and again drove home; his wife accompanying him. On Tuesday night he and his wife again drove to Cherry Grove. He preached, and they stayed all night with one of the members of his church, remaining in that neighborhood during the next day; and he preached again on Wednesday night, January 9, 1895. After the services were over, some of the members of his church invited him to remain with them. He referred the matter to his wife, who decided they must go home because of certain household duties devolving upon her. Up to this time he stood in high esteem with the members of his various congregations, and successful in his work in the ministry. His wife likewise stood high in said congregations. After getting home Wednesday night the 9th, they sat and talked some time. At about the hour of 1 o'clock in the night pistol shots were heard by various neighbors in the town. Many of them came running to appellant's residence within a few minutes. When they arrived at the house, they found appellant's wife lying at the back door of the house with a wound from a pistol ball, which had penetrated her skull upon one side and passed through the brain, and had broken the skull from within on the opposite side of her head, and rested there between the skull and the scalp. The defendant was first seen across the street extending north and south past his house, or on the east side of the street opposite to his house. He was in his night clothes, and barefooted. His house is on the northeast corner lot, where a street called the “National Road,” extending east and west past the front of his house, crosses the street first mentioned at right angles. Immediately or very soon after the shots were heard, cries of murder and distress were heard by the neighbors in the village, who had been aroused from their slumbers by the shots. Those who lived near enough, and immediately looked out, saw him on the opposite side of the street, east from his house, as before mentioned. He was seen by them to pass north until he came to the south side of the National Road street, and then turned to the west on the south side of the street, and passed his house, and was found by the neighbors lying on the ground some 30 or 40 feet west of his front gate. He kept up the cries of murder and calling for help until the neighbors came to him. On examination it was found he had been twice shot, and cut a great many times, from which wounds he was slightly bleeding. He was at once carried into his house, and a surgeon sent for to dress his wounds. And he gave an account to the highly-excited neighbors how he claimed it all happened. He stated that shortly before 1 o'clock in the night he was aroused from his sleep by a pistol shot, and that immediately his wife, who was in the same bed with him, uttered a cry of distress, saying: “Oh, I am shot. Did you shoot me, Will?” And that the pistol ball wound found in her head was made by that shot. And thereupon he saw two unknown men in the room, whereupon he sprang out of bed. Immediately on getting out of bed, a pistol was again fired, and that he felt a stinging sensation. He claimed that the stinging sensation spoken of was produced by the first pistol-ball wound that was inflicted on him. His statement was: That he immediately grappled with one of the strange men in the room, whereupon a most extraordinary struggle ensued. That his wife got up, and engaged in a struggle with the other man, and at one time, while the struggle was going on between him and what he claimed was the low, heavy-set man of the two, his wife came to him, and, as some of the witnesses have it, put her arms around his neck, and said, “Will, is this you?” and, as others say, his statement was that she laid her hand on his arm, and said, “Will, is this you?” That the struggle between him and the man continued around and through that room and through the door out into the sitting room adjoining that on the east, and through that room, and from that into the dining room on the south of that, and back into the sitting room, and from that back into the dining room, and from that into the kitchen south of the dining room, and from that out into the back yard, and from there out of the east side gate into the street extending north and south past the east side of his house, and from there the struggle continued across the street to the east side thereof, where he was first seen that night by his neighbors; and just as he got his man nearly to Dr. Tincher's fence, across which he intended to break the man's back, the other man, who was taller and slimmer, at that juncture came up, and shot the appellant again. He claims that he thereupon immediately became unconscious, and fell down on the ground, and in a short time revived so that he was able to arise, make the outcries already spoken of, and walked to the place already mentioned, where his neighbors found him lying on the frozen ground over which there was a slight fall of snow that came that night. There was moonlight coming through the rifts of clouds flying that made it quite light. He stated that when he was shot by the tall man and fell down and became unconscious, the two men ran off south. The neighbors, without exacting any explanation from him as to how an unconscious man could tell which way the slayers of...