People v. Buchanan

• Decision Date: 26 February 1895
• Citation: 39 N.E. 846,145 N.Y. 1
• Parties: PEOPLE v. BUCHANAN.
• Court: New York Court of Appeals Court of Appeals

145 N.Y. 1

39 N.E. 846

PEOPLE

v.BUCHANAN.

Court of Appeals of New York.

Feb. 26, 1895.

Appeal from court of general sessions, New York county.

Robert W. Buchanan was convicted of murder in the first degree, and appeals. Affirmed.

For opinion of the recorder denying a motion for a new trial and in arrest of judgment, see 25 N. Y. Supp. 481.

Charles W. Brooke, for appellant.

De Lancey Nicoll, for the People.

GRAY, J.

The defendant was indicted by a grand jury of the city and county of New York for the crime of murder in the first degree, in killing Anna Buchanan, his wife, with poison administered to her on the 22d day of April, 1892. The indictment charged the commission of the crime in two counts; the first of which stated that the defendant had administered to the deceased ‘five grains weight of a certain deadly poison called ‘morphine” and the second of which stated that he had administered to her ‘a certain deadly poison to the grand jury unknown,’ etc. Being tried upon the indictment, the defendant was found guilty, by the verdict of a jury, of murder in the first degree. From the judgment entered upon that verdict the defendant has appealed to this court, and it is our duty, under the statute, to review the facts, in order that we may become satisfied that the verdict was neither against the weight of evidence, nor against law, and that justice does not require a new trial of the issue. In the language of the statute, we are to ‘give judgment without regard to technical errors or defects, or to exceptions which do not affect the substantial rights of the parties.’ Code Cr. Proc. § 542. The responsibility and labor thus devolved upon the court are very great. It devolves upon us to pronounce upon the sufficiency of the proofs, and the substantial correctness of all the proceedings upon the trial which preceded the rendition of the judgment of death. This responsibility is only sensibly lessened when we can see that the verdict of the jury was based upon sufficient evidence, and that the defendant had a fair and impartial hearing.

The examination of this very large record has been carefullymade, and a patient and conscientious consideration given to the facts elicited upon the trial, and to the points made by the skillful counsel for the defendant in his effort to procure a new trial. It is our judgment that nothing appears upon the record which would justify us in reversing the conviction. The evidence upon which the defendant was found guilty is wholly circumstantial in its nature, but all the circumstances were pregnant with his guilt, and combined to denounce him as the sole author of a crime by which his wife was deprived of her life. The evidence was abundant and satisfactory to establish the fact of her death having been caused by poison, and not to have been the result of some natural disease. The endeavor to demonstrate the contrary was by no means convincing. While the proof of a death from unnatural causes must rest upon the investigations and the opinions of experts, and confusion may often result from the irreconcilable character of their testimony, it is not so difficult in this case for us to disregard that given by the medical experts for the defense. The detection and punishment of a crime committed secretly, and with precautions against a knowledge of it becoming possible thereafter, of necessity, justify, if not compel, the submission to the jury of every fact and circumstance which may reasonably bear upon the act, or the motive for it. The justification, of course, does not exist, if neither connection nor illustration can be seen in the facts offered to be proved. In People v. Harris, 136 N. Y. 423, 33 N. E. 65, we had occasion to consider the reasons which make the acceptance of a verdict based on circumstantial evidence satisfactory, and the discussion need not be resumed here. In the present case the judicial investigation is aided in a surer degree than in the Harris Case. In both cases the husband was charged with killing his wife with poison, but in the former the marriage relation was secret, and the opportunity of the defendant less evident, while here the intimate marital life existed, and there was the conspicuous fact in the case that the defendant was seen to administer to his wife, at her bedside, something which the circumstances satisfied the jury, and which satisfy us, could not have been the medicine prescribed for her by the physician, but which was some part of the poison which caused her death.

In order to demonstrate that which is the primary fact to be established, namely, that the deceased came to her death by poisoning, it will be of use to detail certain general and known facts. In April, 1892, the deceased was living with her husband, a practicing physician, at 267 West Eleventh street, in the city of New York, and was of the age of 49 or 50 years. Her habits were and had been temperate, and her health was testified to, by those who had known her, as having been good for the previous 14 years. On Friday morning, April 21, 1892, after eating a hearty breakfast, she was taken ill; feeling severe pains in her head, and unable to stand up. She was placed upon a bed, and Dr. McIntyre, a physician, was called in at about 8 o'clock, who found her complaining of excruciating pains in the head, and of a tightness about the throat, which made it difficult to breathe. She was nervous and apprehensive. Her temperature was normal, but her pulse was accelerated. His examination led him to believe the case to be one of hysteria, and he prescribed, as a nervine, a small dose of bromide of sodium mixed with ginger syrup and water, to be given in doses of one teaspoonful every two hours. At 2 o'clock of the afternoon he called again, and, finding the symptoms aggravated, changed the prescription by adding two drachms of chloral hydrate to the bromide; the doses to be the same as before. An hour later, at about 3 o'clock, the defendant was seen to give his wife a dose of two teaspoonfuls of medicine. After taking it she reached for an orange, and bit into it or sucked from it, as though there was a bitterness of taste. She spoke rationally, but in 10 or 15 minutes she fell into a deep sleep. At 7 o'clock she was found by Dr. McIntyre and another physician in a state of profound coma, with the breathing stertorous, the respiration slow, the pulse very rapid, the face flushed, the skin hot and dry, and the eyeball irresponsive to the finger touch. They treated her for possible idiosyncrasy to chloral, without restoring her to consciousness.Later in the evening the physicians returned, and found the same condition. They concluded the deceased was suffering from cerebral apoplexy; a conclusion reached by the exclusion of either uraemia, embolism, or narcotism from chloral,-in part, because of statements by the defendant, and in part as the result of diagnosis. The next morning she was found in the same condition of coma, with a higher temperature, a flushed countenance, a warm skin, and with the pupils of the eye normal, save a slight dilation in the right one. The case was treated as one of cerebral apoplexy. She died in the afternoon, and was buried on Tuesday. Her body was exhumed 42 days later, at the instance of the district attorney, and subjected to a medical examination. The body appeared to be wonderfully well preserved. The autopsy was performed by two skilled pathologists, and revealed no cause for death in any lesion of the brain, or in any disease of the spinal cord or of the various organs of the body. The examination of all the organs and of other matters taken from the body was made in gross and microscopically, and no evidence was found of cerebral hemorrhage, or of any disease having existed which would account for the death. An examination was then had at the hands of experienced chemists, who subjected to an analysis the intestines and their contents, the stomach and its contents, and the liver; being those portions of the body more easily revealing the presence of poisons. They applied as tests six reagents generally approved and accepted by chemists as methods for determining the presence of morphine poison, and, in addition, a physiological test. The result of all the tests, taken together, was to establish the presence of morphine, to the extent of one-tenth of one grain. The physiological test was performed by injecting a portion of the residues of the viscera in a frog, and by injecting fractions of grain of morphine in other frogs of the same size, to get the comparative effect of the several injections. It was their opinion that a discovery of that amount of morphine indicated, under all the conditions, a dose of from four to five grains of morphine. The chemists also found a substance which was consistent with atropine, which is a preparation of the belladonna plant. It answered the chemical and physiological tests of atropine, except in one instance, and the failure there was consistent with the presence of atropine, inasmuch as that drug, upon the application of the same reagent, did not reveal itself. Two physicians were then examined, and in answer to a hypothetical question which fully and fairly resumed the facts connected with the illness and death of the deceased, and the subsequent pathological and chemical examinations of her body, they gave it as their opinion that she had died from narcotic poisoning; the narcotics being morphine and atropine, or some other preparation of belladonna. In their opinion the symptoms of the morning of Friday pointed to atropine poisoning, and, from the afternoon on, to a combined action of that drug and morphine. One witness stated, ‘The picture is of a modification of morphine symptoms, such as is known to be produced by atropine.’ It appears from the evidence that the usual symptoms of morphine are modified by atropine, and that there results a slowness of respiration, a dryness of the...