Miller v. State

• Decision Date: 27 February 1900
• Parties: MILLER v. STATE.
• Court: Wisconsin Supreme Court

106 Wis. 156

81 N.W. 1020

MILLER

v.STATE.

Supreme Court of Wisconsin.

Feb. 27, 1900.

Error to circuit court, Eau Claire county; James O'Neill, Judge.

Christian Miller was convicted of murder in the first degree and brings error. Affirmed.

The plaintiff in error was convicted of murder in the first degree in the circuit court of Eau Claire county, and prosecutes this writ of error to reverse that conviction. The leading facts of the homicide were not greatly in dispute. On the 15th of April, 1898, the defendant, Christian Miller, and his wife, occupied rooms on the second floor of a tenement house in the city of Eau Claire. The deceased, Willard Taylor, with his wife and children, occupied rooms in the same house, and upon the same floor. There was an entry way eight feet long and four feet wide, between the two suites of rooms, and from that entry way the front stairs led to the front door of the house and to the lower floor. There was another suite of rooms on the upper floor of the house, which was not occupied. On the afternoon of the said 15th day of April the deceased, Willard Taylor, was whitewashing an unoccupied room in the southeast corner of said house, and upon the same floor in which he and Miller resided. At about 3 o'clock in the afternoon the defendant, Miller, entered the room where the deceased was at work, and accused the deceased of having killed or destroyed some tomato plants which he had been raising in a tin pan on the rear platform of the house. Thereupon a quarrel ensued between the two men, in which Miller testifies that Taylor struck him with a hammer, knocking him down, and jumped on him. During this quarrel, both Mrs. Miller and Mrs. Taylor came into the room, and Mrs. Taylor testifies that she saw no hammer. Whatever the fact was with regard to this struggle, the two men were finally separated, and each went to his own apartments. The defendant, Miller, testifies that while he was washing the blood from his head where he had been struck with the hammer the deceased came to his door, and pushed it open, and struck him again with the hammer, and threatened to kill him, and that he (defendant) grabbed the hammer, and tried to take it from the deceased, and that they had a struggle in the entry at the head of the front stairs for the possession of the hammer; that Mrs. Taylor grabbed the hammer, and thereupon the deceased took a chair in one hand and the hammer in the other, rushed at the defendant, and pushed or knocked him down the front stairs, and that he thereby received an injury to the base of the spine, and was unable to recall anything that happened afterwards until he found himself in the woods. Mrs. Taylor testifies that Miller broke their door in, and attacked the deceased with a hammer, and that deceased defended himself with a chair, and got hold of the hammer, and pushed Miller out into the hall, and that during this struggle Miller fell down the stairs. The undisputed fact is that, after Miller was pushed down the stairs, he went out of the front door of the house, and went around the house, procured an ax, and came up the back stairway and through the hall, and the fight was renewed at the head of the front stairs, and Miller struck Taylor with the ax upon the head, inflicting a wound from which he died at 10 o'clock on the same evening. Miller fled into the woods, according to his own testimony, and remembered nothing of what had occurred until he found himself wandering in the woods. He returned to Eau Claire upon the second day following the homicide, and was arrested at his brother's house, while apparently endeavoring to elude the officers. The defense of insanity was not introduced.

Joseph W. Singleton, for plaintiff in error.

R. F. Hamilton, Asst. Atty. Gen., for the State.

WINSLOW, J. (after stating the facts).

The killing of the deceased by the plaintiff in error with an ax was admitted in this case, but the contention in the trial court was that the homicide was not murder, because there was not sufficient time for the formation of the “premeditated design to effect death,” which is essential to make the crime murder in the first degree. Upon this question the following instruction was requested and refused, and the refusal is now assigned as error: “The court further instructs you that, though you may be convinced beyond a reasonable doubt that the defendant, at the time he delivered the blow, intended to kill deceased, still, unless you are convinced beyond a reasonable doubt that at the same time the defendant then entertained a premeditated design to effect the death of the defendant, you cannot convict the defendant of murder in the first degree, as a person may intentionally take the life of another, and be guilty of manslaughter, and of that only.” The court, after reading the statutory definition of murder in the first degree, charged the jury on this subject as follows: “You will note carefully the words ‘premeditated design.’ While the law requires, in order to constitute murder in the first degree, that the killing shall be willful, deliberate, and premeditated, it does not require that the willful intent, premeditation, or deliberation shall exist for any particular length of time before the crime is committed. It is sufficient if there was a design and determination to kill, distinctly framed in the defendant's mind, before he struck the fatal blow which caused the death of Willard Taylor. If you find from the evidence, beyond all reasonable doubt, that the defendant, at any time before striking the blow which caused Taylor's death, had formed in his mind a willful, deliberate, and premeditated design to take his life, and that such blow was struck in furtherance of such design, without any justifiable cause thereof, as will be thereafter explained, then you should find defendant guilty of murder in the first degree.” It will be at once seen that the instruction given by the court is in entire accord with the doctrines laid down by the court in the recent case of Perugi v. State, 80 N. W. 593, and that the instruction proposed by the plaintiff in error is just as plainly in conflict with the conclusions reached in that case. The whole subject of intentional killing and premeditated killing is so fully discussed in that case that it is deemed unnecessary to go over it again. It is sufficient to say that the evidence in the case before us shows ample time and opportunity for the formation in the mind of the premeditated design to kill, before the fatal blow was struck; and the circumstances seem to point very persuasively to the conclusion that such design was in fact formed when the plaintiff in error, after the first scuffle, went around the house, and procured the ax, and returned with it to the second story of the house, to renew the conflict. While these considerations dispose of the main question which is presented by the record in the present case, there are a number of minor exceptions which require attention.

1. Mrs. Taylor, the widow of the deceased, was the main witness for the state, and upon her cross-examination she was asked the question whether some parts of an account of the homicide published in the Eau Claire newspaper on the day after the killing were incorrect; the idea being to subsequently prove that Mrs. Taylor authorized her father to make a different statement of the facts, and that such last statement appeared in the same paper on the following day, and then to introduce this second publication as impeaching the testimony of Mrs. Taylor. An objection to the question was sustained, and very properly sustained. The manner in which the foundation must be laid for impeachment of a witness by showing statements made out of court contradictory to his evidence is well established. The witness sought to be impeached must first be asked whether he did not make the supposed contradictory statement,fixing with reasonable certainty time, place, and person to whom it is claimed to have been made; and, if he does not admit it, testimony may be afterwards introduced showing that such statement was made. 3 Jones, Ev. §§ 847, 848. The supposed impeaching statement here, if any, was the one made to her father orally, and not the...