People v. Spohr

• Decision Date: 26 November 1912
• Citation: 206 N.Y. 516,100 N.E. 444
• Parties: PEOPLE v. SPOHR.
• Court: New York Court of Appeals Court of Appeals

206 N.Y. 516

100 N.E. 444

PEOPLE

v.SPOHR.

Court of Appeals of New York.

Nov. 26, 1912.

Appeal from Supreme Court, Trial Term, Westchester County.

Lawrence Spohr was convicted of murder in the first degree, and he appeals. Reversed and remanded.

Charles H. Noxon, of New York City, for appellant.

Lee Parsons Davis, of White Plains, for the People.

HAIGHT, J.

On the 1st day of April, 1911, the defendant with a loaded revolver shot and killed one Rose O'Toole, a servant girl, at the home of her sister, Mary Campbell, in the village of White Plains. The defendant was a musician, enlisted in the United States army, and attached to the band at Ft. Slocum. He was 45 years of age and had been previously married in March, 1885. The evidence tends to show that he commenced keeping the company of Rose O'Toole in January, 1911; that they became intimate and were often together until March following, at which time she refused to receive further attention from him or to see him when he called. On the night of the homicide he entered the apartments of Mr. and Mrs. Campbell during their absence, walked through the kitchen to the bedroom door, and there discovered Rose lying upon the bed and a man by the name of Arthur C. Woodin sitting on the bed beside her. Thereupon the defendant drew his revolver from his pocket, asked Woodin what his name was, and then fired. According to Woodin's testimony, the bullet entered his chin, passed through the jaw into the throat with such force as to knock him over against the bed, and as he arose he coughed the bullet out from his throat and then ran downstairs onto the street; that as he reached the bottom of the stairs he heard three more shots fired. When medical assistance arrived it was found that Rose had received one bullet in the temple, another penetrating the side of the nose, and a third passed into her chest. The defendant, in a letter to his commanding officer at Ft. Slocum, stated that he shot the man intentionally, but the woman accidentally. In his own testimony upon the trial he remembered that he said to the man seated upon the bed, ‘Hello, what's your name,’ and at the same time he remembers the firing of one shot. He, however, did not remember anything more that took place until after he was out of the house upon the street. But in his confession to the policeman it appears that, as he asked the man sitting upon the bed his name, he pulled his gun and fired, and the man jumped up and ran out; that Rose then pulled the bedclothes over her head and arms, and as he fired again she screamed at the first shot and after that was still; that he fired several more times, but how many he did not know. There was other testimony tending to show threats of violence on the part of the defendant during the time that Rose was hiding from him and refusing to see him. The evidence is quite voluminous, but attention has been called to that which we deem now necessary for the purposes of this review.

The district attorney in summing up the people's case called the attention of the jury to the evidence tending to show deliberation and premeditation, claiming that the defendant was guilty under that charge of the indictment. He then proceeded to argue the question as to whether the defendant was guilty of murder in the first degree upon the ground that he was committing a felony at the time that he shot Rose. He proceeds: ‘Here is the proposition: If he killed Rose O'Toole while he was committing an assault, a felony, upon Arthur C. Woodin, he is just as guilty of murder in the first degree as though he deliberately and with premeditation shot Rose O'Toole. * * * The proposition is: Did he commit an assault on Arthur C. Woodin? Woodin is lucky to be alive. You see the assault we must prove on Woodin is assault in the first degree or second degree. Take it with a deadly weapon, a weapon likely to produce grievous bodily harm, that is a deadly weapon. You have no reasonable doubt he was assaulted with a deadly weapon. You cannot say a 38 revolver is not a deadly weapon. You have no doubt, in fact he did commit an assault with a deadly weapon likely to produce grievous bodily harm upon Woodin. He did suffer grievous bodily harm. He got him so he couldn't talk, with a bullet down in his throat. There is a felony, is'nt it? Then we have it practically conceded here that he committed upon Arthur C. Woodin a felony, and not only that, but here is his letter to that effect. * * * ‘The woman in this case was shot accidentally, the man intentionally.’ There is his writing, gentlemen. ‘The woman in this case was shot accidentally, the man intentionally.’ If he intentionally, being in the exercise of his mental powers, shot Woodin and committed assault in the first or second degree upon Woodin, then killed this woman Rose O'Toole, hs has committed murder in the first degree, and are you going to shy at the performance of a disagreeable duty because of the punishment?'

[1][2] The trial judge, in submitting the case to the jury, defined ‘murder in the first degree’ as follows: ‘Murder in the first degree is defined by the law to be the killing of a human being from a deliberate and premeditated design to effect the death of the person killed, or without a design to effect death, without intent to kill, and without deliberation or premeditation, by a person engaged...