People v. Patrick

• Citation: 182 N.Y. 131,74 N.E. 843
• Parties: PEOPLE v. PATRICK.
• Decision Date: 09 June 1905
• Court: New York Court of Appeals

182 N.Y. 131

74 N.E. 843

PEOPLE

v.PATRICK.

Court of Appeals of New York.

June 9, 1905.

Appeal from Court of General Sessions, New York County.

Albert T. Patrick was convicted of murder, and from an order denying a new trial he appeals. Affirmed.

Cullen, C. J., and O'Brien and Vann, JJ., dissenting.

David B. Hill, for appellant.

William Travers Jerome, Dist. Atty. (Judson S. Landon and Howard S. Gans, of counsel), for the People.

GRAY, J.

The defendant was charged in the indictment with murder, in the first degree, committed upon William M. Rice by administering to him mercury, chloroform, and other poisons. When arraigned he pleaded not guilty. A trial was had in the court of general sessions of the peace of the city and county of New York, at which he was convicted, upon the verdict of a jury, as charged in the indictment. Upon the trial the prosecution relied upon the administration of chloroform as the means employed for causing death. From the judgment of conviction, and from an order denying him a new trial, the defendant has appealed to this court. It is his contention that the evidence was insufficient to justify the verdict, and that errors were committed upon the trial, which require that this court should reverse the judgment and award him a new trial. Especially does he insist upon being granted another trial because of certain evidence which he alleges was discovered after the judgment, and so affects the proof relied upon by the prosecution as to make it probable that a different verdict would be rendered. This is a very serious charge, and, in order that justice shall appear to have been done upon the trial of the defendant, an examination and a consideration of the evidence become necessary, which must be somewhat extended. The enormous size of this record casts upon us a burden which might well have been lightened by eliminating from the appeal book much of discussion between court and counsel, and much of repetition in testimony. The matter could have been of benefit neither to the defendant nor to the people. This case has the interest and it is invested with the seriousness which characterize all cases in which the infliction of the death penalty depends upon presumptive proof of the crime charged. The theory of the people was that the defendant had conspired with Charles F. Jones, the valet, or, as sometimes called, the secretary, of Rice, to kill Rice, and that the defendant procured Jones to administer chloroform to him in accomplishment of their joint purpose. This purpose, they say, was motived by the desire to obtain possession of Rice's estate, through a will in favor of the defendant, and through various transfers to him of properties; all purporting to have been executed by Rice, but which had in fact been forged by the defendant with Jones' aid. The defense is based upon a denial that Rice's death was effected by violent means, or that it was by the procurement of the defendant; and the proposition is advanced that the forgeries were not brought home to the defendant, or, if the evidence warranted the finding that they were, that that fact did not necessarily fasten upon him a criminal agency in the murder. A careful reading of this record and a grave consideration of the matters of proof have convinced me that the jury reached a just conclusion, and that there is no warrant for, nor do the interests of justice demand, our interference with the judgment. I see no occasion for the exercise in this case of the broad power conferred by the state upon this court in capital cases to reverse a conviction and to grant a new trial upon the indictment.

In the evolution of the common law, it became essential, in order to convict a person accused of homicide, to prove that the crime had in fact been committed. The corpus delicti, which is to say the body of the crime, or the fact that a murder had been committed, was required to be satisfactorily established by proof of the death, and that the death was caused by the criminal agency of the accused. The rule existed under the Roman civil law, and the English judges adopted it because of the number of deplorable instances of the execution of innocent persons upon convictions resting upon merely incriminating circumstances, and having no support either in some certain proof of the death of the supposed victim, or in that of the fact of a homicide. 2 Hale, P. C. 290; 1 Starkie on Evid. 575; 3 Greenl. Evid. §§ 30, 131. This humane rule of the common law was early incorporated in the body of our laws, and is now embodied in section 181 of the Penal Code, which provides 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 the killing by the defendant, as alleged, are, each, established as independent facts; the former by direct proof and the latter beyond a reasonable doubt.’ The death of Rice being undisputed, the question which we have to consider is whether the evidence was so strong and so cogent that the jurors might justly and intelligently say that, beyond a reasonable doubt, the death was caused by the criminal agency of the defendant. It was not claimed that he committed the act by which Rice was made to die, for the prosecution had the voluntary confession of Jones that it was he who did it; being induced and aided thereto by the defendant. But the defendant was a principal in the commission of the crime, under our law, if he aided and abetted it, whether present or absent, or if he directly or indirectly counseled, commanded, induced, or procured another to commit it. Pen. Code, § 29. The trial therefore presented these questions to the jury upon the evidence, whether it was established that the death was the result of poisoning, and whether that result was aided or abetted, induced, or procured by the defendant. Circumstantial evidence was sufficient for their determination, the death being admitted, if it was of such a character as to leave the inference of guilt the only reasonable one possible from the facts disclosed. In other words, the whole question of fact was the personal guilt of the defendant, and it was perfectly competent for the jury to act upon presumptive proof in its determination. 1 Starkie on Evid. 719, 720; Ruloff v. People, 18 N. Y. 179;People v. Bennett, 49 N. Y. 137, 144;People v. Harris, 136 N. Y. 423, 429,33 N. E. 65. It was only necessary to a verdict of guilty, if they found the cause of death to have been through the administration of chloroform, upon evidence pointing with conclusive force to that result, that the jurors should further find that the defendant acted with Jones in the pursuance of a common design to effect the death. His presence in the felony was constructive, if the evidence established that he worked with Jones towards the preconcerted end, and if he was so situated as to be able to move and to aid his accomplice in the execution of their common design. See People v. Bliven, 112 N. Y. 79, 86,19 N. E. 638,8 Am. St. Rep. 701. As I have said, the testimony of Jones was relied upon by the people to establish the criminal agency of the defendant in the homicide; but, it being the testimony of an accomplice, it was essential to a conviction that he should be corroborated by such other evidence as would tend to connect the defendant with the commission of the crime. Code Cr. Proc. § 399.

I shall consider, in first order, the death of Rice, the facts preceding and attending it, and the opinions of medical witnesses as to its cause. Jones had been employed by Rice in the general capacity of a secretary and a man of all work, for several years. He was 27 years of age. Rice was a man of 84 years of age, and occupied an apartment in the city of New York. At and prior to the time of his death none other than Jones was a member of his household, although a colored woman came in the daytime to do chores in the way of cleaning. He had no physician in attendance upon him untill in the spring or in the early part of the summer of 1900, when Dr. Curry, the friend and the physician of the defendant, at the latter's instance, was brought in by Jones upon an occasion. Jones testified that Rice's attention had been arrested by a magazine article on chloroform and its use, that he (Jones) mentioned it to defendant, and that, after several conversations with defendant upon the subject, the latter proposed that mercury should be given to Rice, as a mode of weakening his system preparatory to administering chloroform. The designs upon Rice's property, which his death was to further, will be discussed later. Jones got the deceased, occasionally, a few weeks before his death, to take some mercurial pills, which he obtained upon a prescription that Dr. Curry had given him during some attack of his own. Their effect was to cause a light diarrhea, which soon passed over. The defendant then, as Jones testifies, furnished him with some stronger mercurial pills, which affected Rice by causing a severe diarrhea. Dr. Curry attended upon him, but was in ignorance of his having taken the pills. Some days before his death the deceased, being made ill by eating bananas, suggested by a friend as a cure for indigestion, again had resort to the mercurial pills, with the result, however, of benefiting his physical condition. On Friday and Saturday, September 21st and 22d, he was rather ill, weak, and at times, on Saturday, delirious. On Sunday, having slept well, he felt better, and Dr. Curry said he was getting along very well at a little before noon. In the evening Rice was sleeping soundly, when, at about 8 o'clock, while still sleeping, Jones saturated a sponge with the contents of a bottle containing about two ounces of chloroform given him by the defendant, as he says, with instructions for its use, placed it within a cone made from a towel, and put it over the face of the sleeper. He left the room for 30 minutes, and then,...