McAffee v. United States

• Decision Date: 28 March 1939
• Docket Number: No. 7071.,7071.
• Citation: 105 F.2d 21,70 App. DC 142
• Parties: McAFFEE v. UNITED STATES.
• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — District of Columbia Circuit

70 App. DC 142, 105 F.2d 21 (1939)

McAFFEE v. UNITED STATES.

No. 7071.

United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia.

Decided March 28, 1939.

Petition for Rehearing Denied April 5, 1939.

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Robt. I. Miller and Joseph A. McMenamin, both of Washington, D. C., for appellant.

David A. Pine, U. S. Atty., and Charles B. Murray, Asst. U. S. Atty., both of Washington, D. C.

Before GRONER, Chief Justice, and STEPHENS, MILLER, EDGERTON, and VINSON, Associate Justices.

STEPHENS, Associate Justice, with whom concurs MILLER, Associate Justice. GRONER, Chief Justice and EDGERTON and VINSON, Associate Justices, concur in part and dissent in part, as below indicated.

The appellant, hereinafter for convenience referred to as the defendant, was convicted in the District Court of the United States for the District of Columbia of the crime of murder in the first degree. From the judgment of the court sentencing him to death, this appeal was taken.

The defendant was charged with the murder of Mrs. Henrietta B. Anderson. The facts disclosed by the evidence are substantially as follows: Mrs. Anderson lived in an apartment at 1633 L Street, N. W., in Washington. The defendant was a janitor in the apartment building. At about 6 o'clock on the afternoon of Sunday, August 22, 1937, Mrs. Anderson's body was discovered in her apartment by her niece. The back of her head had been crushed by blows, apparently inflicted by some hard blunt instrument. Examination by the coroner revealed that Mrs. Anderson had been intoxicated just before her death. Friends summoned by the niece went immediately to the basement quarters where the defendant lived, and found him in a drunken sleep. The police were notified, arrived shortly thereafter, and took the defendant to the precinct station house. There, though still quite drunk, he was able to give answers to questions which the officers put to him, and he gave them names of various acquaintances of Mrs. Anderson who he said had recently visited her. Officers then went to different parts of the city and brought in several persons for questioning. At about 5 o'clock on the following morning, August 23, one of the officers accused the defendant of giving misleading information, and then for the first time the defendant was accused by this same officer of committing the crime himself. The defendant buried his head in his hands and said: "Yes, this is terrible. I did it because she was chasing me with an ice pick." He told this officer and two others than he was jealous of Mrs. Anderson's attention to a "fat man" who came to the house, and that he had told her that before she married that man he, the defendant, would kill her. He also said he had taken the shaker off the furnace in the basement of the apartment building, had gone upstairs and struck and killed Mrs. Anderson with it while she lay on the couch in the front room of her apartment, and had then taken the shaker back and put it upon the furnace again. After he made this statement, the defendant was taken to the apartment house, where the officers found a shaker on the furnace in its proper place. It was free of dust, while the rest of the furnace was dusty. The defendant explained to the officers that he had washed the shaker with a cloth to get the blood off of it, and he identified as the cloth one which the officers found in the set tubs in the basement. This cloth had spots on it which, upon a scientific test later made, proved to be blood spots. Examination of the shaker showed it also to be blood-stained, the washing which it had received having been insufficient to eradicate the stains. Blood stains were found also upon the steps leading from the hall in the apartment house to the basement quarters, and upon the wall and doors of those quarters. The trousers and other clothing of the defendant were blood-stained, as were the backs of his hands; and scrapings taken from under his fingernails contained blood.

After the visit to the apartment house, the defendant was taken to police headquarters and there, about thirteen hours after the arrest, he made and signed a written confession, embodying in substance the statements he had made orally. The written confession was as follows:

"I have been knowing Henrietta Anderson for about two years and I have been going with her that long. Me and her fell out on account of Annie May Johnson, 212 Ivey St., Rocky Mount, North Carolina. She is a school teacher. I told Miss Anderson that I would give up Annie May if she would give up the tall man. Last Thursday, August 19, 1937, Miss Anderson went down to the beach and stayed out all night and me and her got to fighting the next day, Friday. She stayed home all day Friday drunk. I fell out again Yesterday. I said that I wanted to go down town and she told me that I was going nowheres. I was in front of 1633 L Street, N. W., and then I went over to the garage across the street and she came out with an ice pick and called me and she went over and talked with the little lady who had the baby and then I went down to the cellar of 1633 L Street, N. W. Then she came home and me and her got to fussing again and I hit her with my fist.

"She followed me down the cellar with the ice pick and that is where I got the crow-bar or shaker and then me and her goes upstairs and she laid on the bed and told me I was going to bed with her and I tells her I wasn't and then I hits her over the head with the crowbar twice and she was on the bed at the time. I was standing by the bed. The first time I hit her with it she turned over and then I hit her again and I don't remember hitting her more than twice with that crow bar, or shaker. Then I left her and went on downstairs with the shaker and washed it off in the set tub and I put the shaker back on the furnace and then I went to bed. That's all I know about it."

This confession was admitted in evidence. We state below further facts pertinent to the particular questions involved in the appeal.

I

It is asserted by the defendant that under the evidence the written confession was so clearly not voluntary that it was the duty of the trial judge to exclude it. Under the law and practice in this jurisdiction, the duty of a trial judge in respect of an offered confession is first on voir dire to determine whether or not there is evidence upon which the confession might be held to be voluntary. If he concludes there is no such evidence, then he must exclude the confession from the case. But if, in his view, there is evidence from which it might be held to be voluntary, he must admit it in evidence and submit it to the jury under proper instructions. Brady v. United States, 1893, 1 App.D.C. 246; Hardy v. United States, 1893, 3 App.D.C. 35; Davis v. United States, 1901, 18 App.D.C. 468; West v. United States, 1902, 20 App. D.C. 347; Lorenz v. United States, 1904, 24 App.D.C. 337; Murray v. United States, 1923, 53 App.D.C. 119, 288 F. 1008; Wilson v. United States, 1896, 162 U.S. 613, 16 S.Ct. 895, 40 L.Ed. 1090.

The following circumstances are urged by the defendant as proving that the confession was involuntary: The defendant was a negro janitor about seventy years of age. He had been drunk for several days preceding August 22 — the day of the homicide; he was drunk when he was arrested and was drunk a good part of that night. When first awakened, upon being taken into custody in the basement of the apartment house where the homicide occurred, he was forcibly assisted up the stairs. During the night, he was so drunk and sleepy that whenever questioned he had to be awakened. He was questioned by many different officers and at many different times during the night. Around 9 o'clock on the evening of August 22, three officers and three doctors and some others questioned him. At about 12 o'clock midnight he was questioned for an hour. Commencing at about 5 o'clock on the morning of August 23 he was questioned for two hours. He apparently got little continuous sleep during the night. The officers were "attempting to extract from the defendant names of the deceased's associates." The defendant's clothes were taken away from him during the night and he was taken out to the scene of the homicide in the rain, in a pair of pajamas or underdrawers, and was cold and wet. He was given a drink on this account. He was at least twice, and possibly three times, taken to the scene of the killing. On the first such occasion the body of the deceased was still in the room where she was killed. The defendant talked in a rambling manner during the night. When he was confronted with inculpatory inconsistencies and was accused of the crime and said "Yes, this is terrible. I did it because she was chasing me with an ice pick," and again when he signed the written confession, he was in a very nervous and high-strung condition. On both of these occasions he was apparently coming out of a drunk or a "hang-over." In the middle of the morning of August 23, the day after the homicide, the defendant was still nervous and had the appearance of one who had been intoxicated for some time and was coming out of the intoxication.

To the contrary, the following circumstances are by the Government said to prove that the confession was voluntary: No scheme of organized questioning was carried out with the intent to obtain a confession. The apparent purpose of the police in questioning the defendant was to obtain information concerning the homicide, in order to apprehend whoever it developed had committed it, rather than through organized questioning to compel the defendant himself to confess.¹ The defendant was not threatened or struck or given any promise of leniency or any inducement to confess. He was advised that his statements would be used against him. He made no complaint during the night of insufficient sleep — indeed no complaint about anything except that his whisky had been stolen. Though he took the witness...