Matchison v. State

• Decision Date: 30 April 1906
• Court: Mississippi Supreme Court
• Parties: PETER MATCHISON v. STATE OF MISSISSIPPI

40 So. 801

87 Miss. 739

PETER MATCHISON v. STATE OF MISSISSIPPI

Supreme Court of Mississippi

April 30, 1906

November 1905

FROM the circuit court of Adams county, HON. MOYSE H. WILKINSON Judge.

Mathison the appellant, was indicted and tried for and convicted of murder, and appealed to the supreme court.

The appellant married Dinah Pruette, daughter of Sue Pruette chief witness for the state in this case. The couple separated, as detailed in the opinion, and the homicide under consideration is the result of an effort on the part of the appellant to obtain possession of a child born of the union. On the trial, appellant attempted to explain his presence in the blind constructed by himself near the houseboat in which deceased, Bidwell, and Sue Pruette lived, giving as his reason that he was waiting for an opportunity to get the child; but the court below refused to permit this explanation to go to the jury. The appellant also offered to show that Sue Pruette, who testified as to the details of the homicide, and that she recognized the appellant a distance of fifty feet, and noted his actions, was very nearsighted--in fact, could not see ten feet from her. The court refused to permit this proof to be made. Other facts are stated in the opinion of the court.

Reversed and remanded.

COUNSEL^[*]

W. C. Martin, and G. Benoist Shields, for appellant.

The facts are as follows: Peter Mathison, appellant, a middle-aged man, married Dinah Pruette, daughter of Sue Pruette, the chief witness for the state in this case. Of this union there was born one child, a little boy, who was about five years of age at the time of the tragedy whence sprang this prosecution. Some two years after the birth of this child, appellant and his wife separated. In the summer of the year 1904 appellant obtained possession of the person of the child from its mother by a habeas corpus proceeding instituted in Warren county, Mississippi, before Hon. George Anderson, then judge of the circuit-court district including that county. The record of that proceeding discloses the fact that the father sought and obtained the custody of the child because of the evil character of the mother, who had then become a common prostitute and an inmate of a house of ill fame. Having recovered the boy, appellant kept him for a short time in Louisiana, and then, for safekeeping, placed him with two friends, Mr. and Mrs. W. C. Chaney, who lived near Natchez. There the child remained, being properly cared for, until a few days before the killing of Bidwell, when Mrs. Sue Pruette, without the knowledge or consent of appellant, appeared at the house at which the Chaneys lived and practically kidnaped the little fellow, over the protest of Mrs. Chaney, who was ill, and in bed, at the time. Sue Pruette was accompanied by Bidwell in this excursion. The woman, Sue Pruette, was the grandmother of the child, and was evidently an abandoned woman, of the same stripe and character as her daughter Dinah. Her own testimony shows that she was at this time, and had been for a number of years, living in open adultery with Bidwell. Having thus fraudulently and forcibly regained possession of the boy, Bidwell and Mrs. Pruette carried him on down to the houseboat on the bank of the Mississippi river in which the pair lived together. That in thus kidnaping the child they were acting--in part, at least--on behalf and with the connivance of its mother, is apparent, because Dinah Mathison was at that very time living in one of the huts in the immediate vicinity of the Bidwell houseboat. Discovering that the child had been thus lawlessly spirited away by the very people from whom he had taken it through the intervention of the law, appellant, on the day following the abduction, walked down to the Bidwell abode and demanded the child. His demand was refused. He was ordered by Bidwell to stay away from there, and threatened with dire consequences in case he returned for the child. Still hoping and striving to enforce his rights through the law, appellant applied to the sheriff of the county for advice, and then made an affidavit against Bidwell and Sue Pruette, charging them with stealing his boy. On preliminary examination the magistrate, Wilmer Shields, discharged the defendants, and they returned to their habitation in triumph, taking the child with them. Then, in desperation, believing that he had exhausted the law, but determined to rescue his offspring from the abandoned people who had gotten possession of him, appellant went down to the houseboat at daybreak in the morning, armed with a single-barreled shotgun and several shells loaded with B. B. shot. About seven o'clock in the morning appellant killed Bidwell and Jones in manner and under circumstances varyingly related by himself and Sue Pruette. Wresting the child from the frenzied grasp of its grandmother, appellant quietly walked up the hill and on into Natchez. There he gave his gun to a friend and took the child to a priest's house, where appellant was arrested and whence he was taken to jail. In due time he was indicted and tried for the murder of Bidwell, and found guilty as charged. He was sentenced to death, and prayed an appeal to this court.

Now, with regard to the first two assignments of error, examination of the record will show that there were not many exceptions reserved by appellant to the rulings of the trial judge on the admissibility of testimony. We desire, however, to call the court's attention specifically to the following instances wherein we centend that the court below fell into prejudicial error:

First--In her examination in chief Mrs. Pruette testified that she saw appellant fire upon Bidwell from the so-called "ambush," and that the shot was fired while Bidwell was feeding his chickens. Again, she testified that when the first shot was fired she saw the flash and recognized appellant; that he stuck his whole head and breast out, and looked in every direction; that she was looking right at him. Seaman, a witness for the state, testified that the alleged ambush was, on an air line, at least fifty feet from the houseboat. Now, appellant offered to testify that Mrs. Pruette was very nearsighted--that she could not see at a distance greater than ten feet from her; but, on objection of the district attorney, the court below refused to admit this testimony. This refusal was erroneous. Appellant was not giving his opinion about the matter, but stating a fact. When Mrs. Pruette testified that she saw and recognized appellant under certain conditions of distance, it was entirely competent to contradict her upon the point by testimony that she could not have seen at that distance, because of her defective vision. This evidence was not only competent, but it was likewise very material to the defense of the appellant, even though there is no dispute as to the identity of the person who shot Bidwell and Jones. Mrs. Pruette was the only eyewitness of the killing who testified for the state. Her evidence made the case one of cold-blooded assassination. Any testimony that tended to shake her credit with the jury and show that she was exaggerating and falsifying was clearly admissible, and this evidence that she could not see more than ten feet from her would have flatly contradicted her statement that she saw and recognized appellant at a distance shown to be at least fifty feet. Appellant was surely entitled to have this evidence go to the jury for what it was worth. This court cannot say that the jury would have disregarded it or that it would not have changed the result. Right here was the crux of the situation. It was perfectly apparent that, if the jury should believe this woman's story, appellant's case was hopeless. So it devolved upon him, by all legal means available and wherever and whenever it was possible for him to do so, to break down her testimony--to show the jury that she was not telling the truth; but the court, in part at least, prevented this being done by refusing to permit the defense to prove that a portion of her testimony was of necessity false, thereby cutting off appellant from the application of the maxim, "Falsus in uno, falsus in omnibus." That the ruling out of this testimony before the jury must have been exceedingly harmful to appellant is clear. By it the court, as it were, vouched for, and set its judicial seal upon, the credibility of the main witness for the state, and within the hearing and under the observation of the jury declined to allow that credibility to be attacked in a legal manner. Under such circumstances, what more natural than for the jury to follow the course to which they were invited by the court--to repose confidence in the truth of the testimony of Sue Pruette? We respectfully submit that in this instance the rights of the appellant were disregarded, and that fatal error was thereby committed.

Second--Appellant testifying in chief, stated that after he had shot Bidwell the first time the latter ran into the room of the houseboat, and that as soon as he (appellant) went in he heard something strike the floor, and he was going on to say that he "suspected that it was the stock of his gun struck the floor," but, on objection of the state, the court below ruled out the portion of his statement about his supicion. Appellant then testified that he heard him (Bidwell) talking, and Mrs. Pruette "went back there;" that at that time he (appellant) was "up there, hid" --evidently meaning that he was hid in the blind. On being asked why he was "up there, hid," the court below, on the objection of the state, refused to permit the question to be answered. This rejected testimony was offered for the purpose of throwing light upon the conduct and motives of appellant, and of rebutting any...