People v. Harris
| Citation | 240 N.Y.S.2d 503,39 Misc.2d 193 |
| Parties | PEOPLE of the State of New York, v. Dorothy HARRIS, also known as Betty Harris, Defendant. |
| Decision Date | 21 May 1963 |
| Court | United States State Supreme Court (New York) |
Isidore Dollinger, Dist. Atty. (Fred Baroni, New York City, of counsel), for the People.
Natalie B. Steinbock, New York City, for defendant.
Defendant has moved for an inspection of the Grand Jury minutes or, alternatively, a dismissal of the indictment charging her with murder, first degree, in that on the 27th day of October, 1959, she did with malice aforethought wilfully kill one Raymond Garrett, a male child of the age of thirty (30) months by placing and covering a plastic bag over his face and head, causing him to be asphyxiated by the said bag, from which he died.
The District Attorney has submitted an answering affidavit to the instant application consenting only to the court's inspection of the Grand Jury minutes. Neither of the issues as raised in the moving papers and on the oral argument had herein are answered by such affidavit.
It appears that the deceased child was the son of the defendant, having been born prior to her marriage to her present husband. The record is not clear whether the infant was born out of wedlock or was the issue of a prior marriage by the defendant. In any event, the defendant had custody of the child at the time of the incident in question.
The moving papers allege that this defendant and her husband John Harris have had many marital difficulties during their marriage, separating and being reconciled on several occasions. On one occasion, after the defendant had allegedly been struck and beaten by her husband, she brought a charge of assault against him in Westchester County, where she was living and working as a domestic.
While that charge was pending against him, the defendant's husband, John Harris, went to a Bronx police station and there presented to a detective three letters purportedly signed by his wife, one addressed to him, stating that she had killed her child (Raymond Garrett) and was sorry; another, addressed to her mother, stating that she had sexual relations with her stepfather, and the third, addressed to 'Whom It May Concern', admitting sexual activities with certain named females. With regard to these letters, the defendant, through her counsel, urges that while she was living with John Harris he forced her to write these letters at gunpoint, during one of their quarrels, and that he had kept them without disclosing their contents to anyone until their last separation, which culminated in the assault charges she placed against him. Defendant contends in her moving papers that the letters, and specifically the one in which she admitted killing her child, were inadmissible against her since they were not voluntary admissions. If this contention posed the sole issue for determination under the instant application, the admissibility of the incriminating letter as a voluntary admission or confession of guilt by the defendant would be a factual one for resolution by the trial jury, and would not affect the legal sufficiency of the indictment.
However, upon the argument of the motion in open court, this approach was abandoned, and the defendant, through counsel, there contended that this latter letter implicating herself in the asphyxiation of the deceased was a privileged communication betwen husband and wife, and was inadmissible as evidence against her, as provided by section 2445 of the Penal Law; that the exclusion of such letter from evidence vitiated the indictment against her, since there was no other proof connecting her with the commission of the charged crime, and especially since she had previously been exonerated when the death of the child was investigated by the District Attorney on October 27, 1959, and a finding was made by the Medical Examiner that the infant's death was an accident, and did not result from a criminal agency.
It appears from the Grand Jury minutes herein that when first questioned by the police at the time of the incident in question, the defendant stated that while she was in the kitchen of her home performing household chores, she noticed that her child, which she had placed on the couch in another room, was very quiet; and that when she went into the room where the couch was she saw her child inside garment plastic bags that were all entangled. When interrogated as to how the child got into the bag she speculated that he had crawled in, and that while inside he would have control of the zipper. This interrogation, it is noted, occurred after she had called the police for help, and after an unsuccessful effort by the police to review the child by artificial respiration when he was found still warm.
The defendant's husband, John Harris, testified before the Grand Jury that the defendant had a child, the deceased, when he married her; that after the death of the child his wife was going back and forth to her mother, and that at one point she stayed away from home for about two weeks and then returned, and that they never lived happily after that; that on one occasion while she was away from home she had left a note in the house for him which read as follows:
When Harris was asked by the District Attorney, while being examined before the Grand Jury, what, if anything, he did with this note after he found it, the following colloquy occurred:
This foregoing is the substance of the pertinent testimony of John Harris insofar as it affects the status between the defendant and this witness at the time she wrote the note implicating herself in the homicidal death of the deceased male child, Raymond Garrett.
Section 2445 of the Penal Law, reads as follows:
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