People v. Beckwith

• Decision Date: 07 January 1888
• Citation: 108 N.Y. 67,15 N.E. 53
• Parties: PEOPLE v. BECKWITH.
• Court: New York Court of Appeals Court of Appeals

108 N.Y. 67

15 N.E. 53

PEOPLE

v.BECKWITH.¹

Court of Appeals of New York.

January 7, 1888.

The defendant, Oscar F. Beck with, was accused by the grand jury of Columbia county of the crime of murder in the first degree, in killing one Vandercook willfully, and with deliberate and premeditated design. He was tried, and convicted of the offense. The conviction was affirmed by the general term, and from its judgment he appeals to this court.

L. F. Longley, for appellant.

A. B. Gardenier, for respondent.

DANFORTH, J., ( after stating the facts as above.)

A reversal of the conviction and a new trail is asked for, upon the grounds (1) that there is no legal proof of the corpus delicti; (2) that the verdict is against the weight of evidence, and against the law; (3) that the verdict was the result of prejudice and passion on the part of the jury; (4) that evidence offered by the defendant was improperly excluded; (5) that the officers charged to keep the jury while deliberating upon their verdict were not properly sworn.

There is nothing in the record to sustain this last proposition. The oath actually administered is not given, nor is there anything before us to show that the regulation of law in regard to it (Code Crim. Proc. § 421) was not observed.

The fourth point seems also without merit. The evidence offered and rejected is sufficiently stated by the general term, (45 Hun, 428,) and was properly dealt with. It had no relation to any question at issue. Nor did it affect the credibility of the witness whose expressions in conversation were sought to be proven. Testimony as to matters which are neither relevant nor material is incompetent, because it tends neither to establish nor disprove anything.

The third point has no foundation. The only fact concerning it to which our attention is directed by the appellant is that 156 jurors were called before a trial panel could be obtained. Difficulty in procuring persons qualified to sit is no evidence that the jurors actually chosen, and thus pronounced free from ‘all legal objection,’ and to be man ‘of approved integrity and sound judgment,’ (2 Rev. St. 411, § 13, subs. 5,) were either actuatedlby improper motives, or that the verdict rendered did not express the truth of the matter as disclosed to them in evidence.

The remaining propositions of the appellant are of a more serious character.

The first ( supra) is founded upon the general rule that the fact that an offense has been committed must be fully established before any one can be held to answer for it. ‘I would never,’ says Lord Hale, (2 Hale, P. C. 290,) ‘convict any person of murder or manslaughter unless the fact was proved to be done, or at least the body was found dead.’ The proposition is elsewhere somewhat differently stated, as by Starkie, (1 Starkie, Ev. 575,) that, upon charges of homicide, the accused shall not be convicted unless the death be first distinctly proved, either by direct evidence of the fact, or by inspection of the body; by Greenleaf, (3 Greenl. Ev. § 30,) that even in cases of homicide, though ordinarily there ought to be the testimony of persons who have seen and identified the body, yet this is not indispensably necessary in cases where the proof of the death is so strong and intense as to produce the full assurance of moral certainty; in Ruloff v. People, 18 N. Y. 179, that, in order to warrant a conviction of murder, there must be direct proof either of the death, as by the finding and identification of the corpse, or of criminal violence adequate to produce death, and exerted in such a manner as to account for the disppearance of the body.

It is also said that the corpus delicti in murder has two components: death as the result, and the criminal agency of another as the means. It is only where there is direct proof of one that the other can be established by circumstantial evidence. And by the Penal Code of the degree of proof in such cases is clearly stated by the provision (section 181) that ‘no person can be convicted of murder or manslaughter unless the death of the person alleged to have been killed, and the fact of killing by the defendant as alleged, are each established as independent facts,-the former by direct proof, and the latter beyond a reasonable doubt.’ This statute regulates the practice of the courts as to matters of evidence, signifying what weight is to be given to the testimony admitted; and the appellant claims that its prohibition applies to the time of the trial, without regard to the time when the offense was committed, whether before or after the passage of the law. It does, unless restricted by the act itself. The court below were of opinion that it was so limited, and that the provisions of section 181, as they now read, do not apply. The homicide was committed January 10, 1882. The Penal Code took effect December 1, 1882, (section 727;) and it was provided (section 2) that ‘no act or omission begun after the beginning of the day on which this Code takes effect as a law shall be deemed criminal or punishable, except as prescribed or authorized by this Code, or by some statute of this state not repealed by it. Any act or omission begun prior to that day may be inquired of, prosecuted, and punished in the same manner as if this Code had not been passed.’ Does the latter clause include the provision of section 181? An ‘act,’ criminal in its nature, ‘may be inquired of’ by various courts upon whom jurisdiction is conferred ‘to inquire,’ through the intervention of a grand jury, concerning it, or such inquiry may be made in certain cases through an examination before a magistrate, but in either case the ‘injury’ relates to a proceeding before indictment found or trial had; prosecution relates to the warrant, the arrest, the indictment, and other proceedings following the ‘inquiry,’ and before punishment, and the manner of so doing is regulated by the Code of Procedure, (Pen. Code, § 8.) Neither relates to, or within their common meaning includes, the evidence which may be given, or the degree of proof required upon the inquiry, or during the prosecution, to secure a conviction and punishment. The section (181) enacts a rule of evidence applicable, we think, upon the trial, to all cases within its terms, and is not...