Lanahan v. Commonwealth

Decision Date26 March 1877
PartiesLanahan <I>versus</I> The Commonwealth.
CourtPennsylvania Supreme Court

Before AGNEW, C. J., SHARSWOOD, MERCUR, GORDON, PAXSON and WOODWARD, JJ.

Error to the Oyer and Terminer of Luzerne county: Of January Term 1876, No. 167.

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Henry W. Palmer, John T. Lenahan, M. M. L'Veille and E. L. Merriman, for plaintiff in error.—To sustain this conviction it must be shown that the killing was malicious, premeditated and deliberate. There was no evidence whatever of express malice. The prisoner and the deceased were friends; there was no ill-will no hatred, no antecedent threat, no evidence of former design or concerted scheme and no motive to kill, either for revenge or gain.

Can malice be implied from the circumstances attending this killing — from the character of the weapon used? The presumption of malice from the use of a deadly weapon will raise the crime no higher than murder of the second degree: Kelly v. Commonwealth, 1 Grant 492. The bare fact that Lanahan fired the fatal shot is the sole evidence upon which the jury found the deliberation and premeditation. There was nothing to show that the thought of murder had ever entered the prisoner's mind. When the buggy started from the hall the deceased and the prisoner were friends and had no quarrel or cause for quarrel. Within one minute, and before five hundred feet had been traversed, the fatal shot was fired. When did the prisoner premeditate the fatal deed? We are not bound to conclude that he premeditated the killing from the single fact that he did the deed. In the absence of proof of express malice or motive we must conclude that the shot was induced by something that happened in the wagon. Are not the facts that Lanahan was wounded on the night in question, his bloody clothing, the bullet in his side, where Reilly's right hand must have put it, evidence that there must have been a quarrel and a mutual exchange of shots?

The doctrine laid down by the court in regard to the degree of intoxication necessary to excuse or palliate the offence was too stringent: Bishop's Crim. Law, vol. 1, sect. 409; Keenan v. Commonwealth, 8 Wright 55. It is contended that the evidence failed to make out a case of murder in the first degree, and that it is the duty of this court, under the Act of 15th February 1870, Purd. Dig. 610, pl. 39, to review the same and determine whether all the essential ingredients exist: Grant v. Commonwealth, 21 P. F. Smith 495.

C. E. Rice, District Attorney, Alexander Farnham, E. S. Osborne and John Lynch, for the Commonwealth.—The counsel for plaintiff in error misapply the authority of Kelly v. Commonwealth, supra. It is true that the killing must be malicious, but it not appearing that it was done in self-defence, or in any other excusable manner, the inference of malice immediately arises from the killing itself, and murder of the first degree is presumed. There is no occasion for the use of a deadly weapon to raise this presumption. It arises from the unlawful killing, and the burden then rests on the accused to rebut this presumption, in order to reduce the grade to manslaughter: Commonwealth v. Drum, 8 P. F. Smith 17. Taking even Judge THOMPSON'S ruling, that the additional fact of the use of a deadly weapon would raise the presumption to no higher degree than the unlawful killing alone would have done, and that neither intention, deliberation, nor premeditation can thereby be inferred, he yet declares that, as to these last, the instrument used may be evidence, and a case can be easily supposed where it must necessarily be the only evidence affecting the degree, and yet be considered sufficient evidence. But it is held in Kilpatrick v. Commonwealth, 7 Casey 216, that the intent to take life was presumable from the nature of the weapon used. To the same effect is Cathcart v. Commonwealth, 1 Wright 112. Now how far in its legal effect does intent to take life operate? It is that element which necessarily removes from a case the feature of murder of the second degree. If, then, from an unlawful killing, malice is inferred, but presumptive only, of murder of the second degree, and if, again, from the use of a deadly weapon, the intent to take life is to be presumed, malice also still being inferred, then the presumption in the latter case, not being that of murder of the second degree, must rise to that of murder of the first degree, leaving upon the defendant the burden of reducing the grade to manslaughter, by proving that the act was without malice.

Are the ingredients of murder of the first degree to be found in any portion of the Commonwealth's testimony? If so, the power and duty of the court, under the Act of 15th February 1870, is at an end. Any reasonable doubts which may have sprung from the defendant's testimony have already been passed upon by the jury. They cannot be raised here: Grant v. Commonwealth, 21 P. F. Smith 507; Staup v. Commonwealth, 24 Id. 458.

Chief Justice AGNEW delivered the opinion of the court, March 26th 1877.

Upon the indisputable evidence in this case the verdict was correct. These are the leading facts. Andrew Lanahan, the prisoner, and John Reilly, Esq., the deceased, were at a saloon under Landmesser's Hall, in Wilkesbarre, on the afternoon of the 15th of September 1874. They had not gone there together, but were drawn thither by a political convention held in the hall above. Late in the evening, Lanahan invited Reilly to take a seat in his buggy to go home. They left the saloon about dark, Lanahan sitting on the right and Reilly on the left side; Lanahan driving down Main street. When between two and three hundred yards from the saloon, and still in the built up part of Main street, a witness on the sidewalk heard two shots in pretty quick succession, and saw two flashes proceeding from the buggy, and immediately heard a voice coming from the buggy saying: "You have shot me," or "I am shot." The direction of both flashes was from the right towards the left side. Immediately a man's body slipped from the seat, and his legs hung out at the left side, dangling against the wheel, and continued thus for a short time until the buggy approached Hazel street, the vehicle going at great speed. Before the firing no voices were heard, or other evidence of a quarrel in the buggy. When crossing the railroad track into Hazel street, the buggy was held up and crossed slowly. Just after turning into Hazel street, a witness saw two men in the buggy, one on the left, apparently lying with his head against the shoulder of the other on the right side, who held the reins and whip in his right hand, and was pulling a blanket over the man on the left. The buggy was soon driven at great speed, the driver striking the horse rapidly with the whip in his right hand. At the Newtown bridge, at a considerable distance from Wilkesbarre, two double teams were about crossing, and the front driver hallooed to the one behind to "hurry up, there was a `rig' coming pretty fast to cross the bridge." The hindmost driver whipped his horses, but was not quite across when the "rig" struck his barouche, the front wheel of the former locking into the hind wheel of the latter. The driver of the "rig" whipped his horse rapidly to get loose, the driver of the barouche hallooing "whoa," and three times telling the other to stop, and he would help him, the other saying nothing. Both got out about the same time, the driver of the barouche running down to the head of the horse in the "rig" and the driver of the latter immediately turning from him, and running around the horses of the barouche, and then up the railroad towards Newtown. The driver of the barouche called to a woman to bring a light, and stooping down discovered a man lying under the wheel, but his horses being restive started, and he ran to catch them, got on his box and drove on to the city. The woman and others coming, the man under the broken "rig" was discovered to be 'Squire Reilly, and the "rig" afterwards identified as the buggy Lanahan had hired, and drove from the saloon with Reilly in. In a few minutes after the collision at the bridge Lanahan was met by a woman, who knew him, going rapidly into Newtown and breathing very hard. He reached home between eight and nine o'clock, and on the same night sent a companion for a doctor to extract a ball from his body. His vest and coat were burned as if by powder. One of his companions felt a ball in his flesh under his arm. The doctor did not come, and the next thing known of the prisoner was on the following night when a companion, who says he owed him twenty dollars, found him in the woods beside a rock or bushes, gave him the money, and told him the people were excited and would hang him, if caught.

Lanahan disappeared, and was not found until about a year afterwards, when he was discovered in a western state, under a feigned name, arrested and brought back, denying his identity and not admitting it until fully identified at Wilkesbarre. Reilly, the deceased, was not known to have possessed a pistol, and none was found upon him, or in the buggy, or on the road the buggy ran, or elsewhere. The identity of the two persons, the buggy and horse, and of the time, place and circumstances of the shooting being...

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13 cases
  • Commonwealth v. Danz
    • United States
    • Pennsylvania Supreme Court
    • 17 Abril 1905
    ...definitely assigned for the action of the defendant would constitute no legal reason for acquitting her: McLain v. Com., 99 Pa. 86; Lanahan v. Com., 84 Pa. 80; McCue v. Com., 78 Pa. 185; Zell v. Com., 94 Pa. It is both legally and medically established beyond peradventure that in order to s......
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    • 20 Marzo 1893
    ...the time in the case supposed would have been very brief, that no explanation would have been called for. Afterwards, in Lanahan v. Commonwealth, 84 Pa. 80, Justice AGNEW fully pointed out the reasons for qualification in Drum's case. As to the absence of the word "willful" in the instructi......
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    ...McAnany, Jr., for appellant. -- The charge as to premeditation, was erroneous: Com. v. Drum, 58 Pa. 9; Jones v. Com., 75 Pa. 403; Lanahan v. Com., 84 Pa. 80; Com. v. Greene, 227 86. The use of a weapon upon a vital part does not shift the burden from the Commonwealth of proving the intent, ......
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