Mack v. State
| Citation | 4 N.W. 449,48 Wis. 271 |
| Parties | MACK v. THE STATE |
| Decision Date | 03 February 1880 |
| Court | United States State Supreme Court of Wisconsin |
Argued November 12, 1879
ERROR to the Circuit Court for Rock County.
Reversed and cause remanded for a new trial.
For the plaintiff in error, there was a brief by Winans & McElroy her attorneys, with Ogden H. Fethers, of counsel, and oral argument by Mr. Winans and Mr. Fethers.
For the state, there was a brief by Alex. Wilson, the Attorney General, and oral argument by H. W. Chynoweth, Assistant Attorney General.
The plaintiff in error was tried in the circuit court for Rock county upon an information for the murder of her husband convicted of murder in the first degree, and judgment entered against her that she be imprisoned for life in the state prison. A bill of exceptions was regularly settled and filed in said court, and a writ of error issued, bringing the record to this court for a review of the exceptions taken on the trial by the plaintiff in error. The exceptions taken, and upon which she relies in this court for a reversal of the judgment against her, are mainly exceptions to the introduction of evidence against her, and to the rejection of evidence, offered by her.
The record shows, with such a degree of certainty that it is hardly controverted by the plaintiff in error, that on the night of the 13th day of July, 1878, at his residence in the town of Turtle, in Rock county, the husband of the plaintiff in error was murdered; and that early in the morning of the 14th of July his dead body was found by his hired boy in the horse stable in his barn, lying behind one of the horses. There was a large wound upon the side of his head, cutting through the scalp, but not apparently fracturing the skull; and subsequent examination showed that he had received fatal injuries about the chest, and several of the ribs were fractured.
The evidence also shows that she was living with him in the same house at the time of his death, but that she had not slept in the same room or bed with him for a considerable time before his death. The only other persons at the deceased's house on the night of his death were a boy, Joseph Watsic, who was about nineteen years old; a man, Frank Dickerson, about twenty-three years old, who was charged with assisting in the murder; and Ettie Mack, aged fourteen years, Bernice, aged six years, and Beatrice, aged three years, children of the deceased and the accused.
On the night of the murder, Joseph Watsic slept up stairs, in the same room, but not in the same bed, with the man Dickerson. All the children slept up stairs. The deceased slept below, and the accused was accustomed to sleep below, but swears that on this night she slept up stairs with her oldest daughter. The youngest child had slept with the deceased, but on this night she had been put to bed up stairs, as the accused said, because it was warm and she thought the child might disturb her husband.
It appears that Watsic and the children heard no noise or disturbance of any kind about the house during the night; that the accused called Watsic to get up about sunrise on Sunday morning, which was earlier than he was accustomed to rise; that when he got up Dickerson requested him to go to the barn and feed the horses, though Dickerson usually fed and took care of them; and that Watsic got up and went to the barn, and found the dead body of the deceased in the stable behind one of the horses.
The evidence further showed that the deceased was jealous of Dickerson, and suspected him of having improper intercourse with his wife; that on the night previous to the murder he and the accused had had a quarrel about midnight, during which she had struck him with considerable violence on the head with a heavy pitcher; that after she struck him over the head he went out of the house to the barn, and she followed him out; and that Frank Dickerson saw them when they came out of the house on that night, and claims to have heard what was said between the deceased and his wife on that occasion.
The accused denies all knowledge of how the deceased came to his death, and says she did not awake after she went to bed that night until the morning, and heard no disturbance or noise of any kind about the house.
The evidence also shows that not long before this the deceased had purchased a pistol and brought it to the house, and that the accused had got it in her possession and hid it from him; and that is alleged to have been the cause of the quarrel on Friday night.
Dickerson swore, on the trial, that there had been illicit intercourse between himself and the accused frequently while he was in the employ of the deceased; that the deceased had discharged him, and that he was reemployed at the solicitation of the accused; that on the night of the murder the accused came to the door of the room where he slept, but said nothing at first; that about an hour after, she came up stairs to the door again, and then he heard the deceased open his door down stairs and come up; that she had the revolver in her hand; that she turned and followed deceased down stairs, and said, "Frank, come down stairs;" that he then got up and went down stairs, and as he stepped from the dining room to the kitchen door they were talking pretty loudly, and the accused took a club from the wood-box and struck the deceased on the side of his head, and he fell and did not move; that at the instigation of the accused he helped her carry the body to the barn, and placed it behind the horse, where it was found in the morning; that the accused took the horse by the head and backed her up in order to make her step on the body. He details with great particularity what conversations took place between them; that she made him take off his shirt, which had some blood on it, and that they took some cloths which had been wrapped around the head of deceased when they carried him to the barn, and were bloody, and hid them under the privy; and that it was arranged that she should call Watsic in the morning, and that he should tell Watsic to go out and feed the horses, so that he might discover the dead body. When first asked by one of the neighbors, who had assembled there on Sunday morning, how he was killed, she said that "the horse killed him; she found him behind the horse."
The record also shows that Dickerson had at first, when before the coroner, denied all knowledge of how the death occurred, and denied all criminal intercourse with the accused; and that he boldly admitted on the trial that he had sworn falsely on these occasions.
I have made this brief statement of some of the principal things connected with the murder, as sworn to by the witnesses, not for the purpose of conveying the idea that it is a summary of the evidence given on the trial--the trial occupied several weeks, and the whole testimony, as taken by the reporter, covers over 2,000 written pages,--but for the purpose of showing the materiality of some of the evidence which was offered by the accused and ruled out by the court.
It will be seen, from the foregoing statement, that the only witness who gives any direct evidence of the killing of the deceased by the accused, is the witness Dickerson; and it is evident, from the statement, that his connection with the murder is such as to render his evidence subject to very great suspicion, and that his former contradictory statements as to the most material facts, under oath, so impeached his credibility that the jury would have been justified in disbelieving his testimony, unless corroborated by the other evidence in the case. The conviction, if sustained, must be sustained mainly upon the circumstantial evidence produced against her; and it is this view of the case which has compelled us to the conclusion that the court erred in excluding evidence which might have explained some of the strongest points which the circumstantial evidence makes against the accused.
In the absence of satisfactory direct evidence of the commission of the crime by the accused, it was necessary for the state to strengthen the circumstantial proofs of facts existing at the time of the murder, tending in some degree to fasten the guilt upon her, by showing, if possible, some adequate impelling motive which might induce her to commit the murder. This the state undertook to do, first, by showing that the affectionate and kindly feelings which ordinarily exist between husband and wife, had long since ceased to exist between the deceased and the accused; that in place thereof the accused had come to look upon her husband with feelings of hatred and contempt, and the husband was filled with jealousy, and possibly harbored thoughts of revenge, and the peace and harmony which should surround the home had given place to disgraceful quarrels, resulting in personal violence. Having shown that the affectionate relations of husband and wife no longer existed, the state then undertook to show that the accused, impelled by her passions, had violated her marital vows, and carried on an adulterous intercourse with the man Dickerson in the house of her husband. By this evidence the state laid the foundation for the argument that the hatred of her husband and her unhallowed desire for her paramour would be an irresistible motive impelling her to remove, by the terrible crime of murder, the object of her hatred, and thus open the way to the full gratification of her lustful passion for Dickerson.
Every part of the evidence, therefore, which tended to show her hostility towards her husband or her passion for Dickerson, became most material in the case.
The evidence of the transaction about midnight on the Friday night before the murder, in which, it is admitted, the...
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