People v. Eaton
| Decision Date | 03 February 1886 |
| Citation | 59 Mich. 559,26 N.W. 702 |
| Court | Michigan Supreme Court |
| Parties | PEOPLE v. EATON. |
Error to Genesee.
The Attorney General, for the People.
Long & Gold, for defendant and appellant.
Eaton was convicted of arson. The testimony connecting him with the crime was entirely circumstantial. The property burned consisted of a barn situated upon lands belonging to a divorced wife and her daughter, and occupied by her father. The evidence consisted of showing his animosity to his wife and to her father, and of his threats made previous to the fire, and also of his own contradictory statements, made after his arrest, as to his whereabouts on the night of the fire.
The witness Ida May White was permitted to testify to threats made by the respondent some two years before the fire occurred. The objection to this testimony was that it was too remote in point of time. The testimony was admissible. Other witnesses were produced who testified to threats made at different times, not, as in the case of Mrs White, that he would burn the barn, but to the effect that he had been ill treated and "routed off" of the place and that no man should ever prosper on that place.
After he had been arrested, and arraigned before the justice, he was committed to the county jail to await trial, and on his way there he voluntarily stated to the officer who had him in charge that on the night the barn was burned he slept at Nesbitt's with a stranger named Millard. This testimony was objected to as incompetent and immaterial. But we think it was both competent and material.
While in jail, awaiting examination, respondent wrote a letter addressed to Mr. John Edwards, East Saginaw, Michigan. This letter the respondent handed to Mr. Parsell to mail; but, instead of mailing the letter, Parsell handed it to the prosecuting attorney, and he directed Parsell to redeliver the letter to respondent, which he did in the presence of Constable Garner, who asked Eaton for the letter, and he gave it to him. In this letter he stated that he staid all night with Nesbitt the night of the twenty-fifth of July, (the night of the fire,) and left for Saginaw the next night, which was Saturday. The letter and envelope was offered and received in evidence, against the objection of respondent's counsel. It was clearly admissible.
At the examination before the justice the respondent voluntarily was sworn, and gave testimony respecting his whereabouts from the evening of the twenty-fifth of July at 7:45 P.M., until his arrest in East Saginaw on the 27th, which was inconsistent with his previous statements. He swore that on Friday, the twenty-fifth of July, he took the 7:45 train at night on the Flint & Pere Marquette railroad, at Flint, and went north as far as the county line, and there got off and walked north and walked all night, etc. His testimony was reduced to writing by the...
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