People v. Burt
| Decision Date | 02 July 1883 |
| Citation | 16 N.W. 378,51 Mich. 199 |
| Court | Michigan Supreme Court |
| Parties | PEOPLE v. BURT. |
No one whether private person or officer, has any right to make an arrest without warrant, in the absence of actual belief based on actual facts creating probable cause of guilt. Suspicion without cause can never be an excuse for such action. The two must both exist--be reasonably well founded and where the life of an actual felon is taken by one who does not know or believe his guilt, such slaying is murder.
Where one kills another, who is attempting his arrest without warrant, when such arrest is not warranted by any honest and well-founded supposition of his complicity in certain burglaries that had been committed, on his trial for murder evidence that the alleged burglaries had been committed is irrelevant.
Where a party, having been provoked by unlawful violence and the display of deadly weapons to compel his submission to a wrongful arrest, kills the party making the arrest, the killing can only be manslaughter; and where he has been convicted of murder, and the prosecution for manslaughter would be barred by the statute of limitations, the judgment should be vacated and the prisoner discharged.
Error to Livingston.
J.J. Van Riper, for plaintiff in error.
M.V. & R.A. Montgomery, for defendant in error.
Respondent having been convicted of murder was sentenced to 20 years' imprisonment, and brings error. The attorney general, on careful consideration of the case, has concluded that he cannot uphold the conviction. We are of the same opinion. But, inasmuch as we are to consider whether the prisoner should be retained for further trial or discharged, we are compelled to deal with it far enough to determine that question. Respondent is charged with murdering one Martin Van Etter on the eighteenth of October, 1867. The complaint and warrant for his arrest were made in January, 1879,--between 11 and 12 years afterwards. The testimony showed that he could have been reached at almost any time during this interval, and no good reason was shown for any delay. As his defense consisted partly of proof that he was at that time in a different part of the state, and his identification depended chiefly on testimony of a witness very strongly interested in clearing himself from a bad case of wrong-doing under color of zeal for the public service, the delay was at least unfortunate in rendering testimony of so stale a transaction unsafe.
Without going over the facts an outline of the principal matters will be enough to explain our legal views. Some burglaries having been recently committed at Williamston, in Ingham county where respondent had been doing business, one Carr, who was a constable of Ingham county, undertook, with Van Etter's co-operation, to see what they could discover on the subject. They had no indications or suspicions, well or ill founded, pointing towards any person as the criminal. They procured revolvers, and stationed themselves by a bridge near Fowlerville, in Livingston county, with the purpose of compelling passers-by to submit to a search, expecting thereby to get at indications of guilt in somebody. The person who killed Van Etter, and who is claimed to have been respondent, having, while passing along the...
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