People v. Tice

• Decision Date: 15 March 1892
• Parties: PEOPLE v. TICE.
• Court: New York Court of Appeals Court of Appeals

131 N.Y. 651

30 N.E. 494

PEOPLE

v.TICE.

Court of Appeals of New York.

March 15, 1892.

Appeal from court of oyer and terminer, Monroe county.

Joseph L. Tice was convicted of murder in the first degree, and from the judgment, and an order denying a motion for a new trial, made on the minutes, he appeals. Affirmed.

H. Perry Blodgett and James G. Greene, for appellant.

George A. Benton, Dist. Atty., for the People.

ANDREWS, J.

A perusal, of the case leaves no doubt that the evidence justified the verdict. The fact that the defendant caused the death of his wife is undisputed, and the elements of intention, motive, deliberation, and premeditation are found in the proofs on the part of the prosecution. The defendant, in the afternoon of July 11, 1891, entered the house of Mrs. Kehl, where his wife had resided for several months in the capacity of a domestic, and seated himself in the room where his wife and Mrs. Kehl were. His wife was standing at a table, engaged in washing dishes. He asked his wife if she would consent to live with him, and she said: ‘No. I will never trust you again, because you stabbed me once, and I laid at the point of death in the hospital; and I will never trust you again.’ He asked her a second time if she would not live with him, and she again refused. Mrs. Kehl left the room for a moment, and when she returned she testified that the defendant was standing by the table with one hand on the shoulder of his wife, and with the other making motions as if striking at her in front. His wife made an exclamation, and ran out of the door into the yard. The defendant followed her, and plunged a knife into her back, and left it in her body. She started again to get away, and the defendant overtook her, and pulled the knife out of her body, and returned to the steps of the house, holding the bloody knife in his hand. He remained on the steps a few moments, and then crossed the yard into the street, and was shortly afterwards arrested. The wife fell near the gate, and soon died. The autopsy disclosed three fatal knife wounds on her person,-two in front, and one in the back. The intention of the defendant to kill his wife was clearly established by the circumstances immediately attending the homicide. The evidence of deliberation and premeditation disclosed by the circumstances of the assault was supplemented by other proof. It was shown that on Friday (the day before the homicide) the defendant, who worked in a shop for the manufacture of wood mouldings, was seen sharpening a knife like the one with which the wounds were inflicted. It was a knife in which the blade was firmly set in the handle,-not movable,-and different from any used in the shop. When he entered the Kehl house, on the day of the homicide, the knife was not in his hands; and the inference is that it was concealed upon his person. The motive which prompted the murder was sought to be disclosed by proof of the relations existing between the defendant and the deceased. They were married in 1867, both parties having been married before, and both having had children by the former marriage. They had frequent broils after their marriage, attributable in the main, as the evidence tends to show, to their habit of drinking intoxicating liquors. The husband frequently came home drunk, and the wife occasionally drank to excess, also. About a year before the homicide, while they were living together at Mrs. Kehl's, the husband stabbed his wife, and afterwards stabbed himself. The wife, a few months before the homicide, caused her husband to be arrested and sent to the penitentiary for drunkenness; and he was discharged from the penitentiary July 4, 1891, a few days before the homicide. The husband also, on one occasion, caused his wife to be arrested for drunkenness. The parties separated in the spring of 1891, and did not thereafter live together; but the husband exhibited great anxiety to have his wife live with him again, and expressed to many persons great affection for her. He frequently importuned her to consent to live with him again, and solicited Mrs. Kehl and other persons to influence her to do so. But she persistently declined. On the day before the homicide, he sought to get a married daughter of the deceased to induce her mother to live with him. Later on the same day, (Friday,) according to the witness Mrs. Kehl, the defendant told her he heard his wife was going to Canada; and he said, ‘I will spoil her fun.’ And on Saturday morning, the day of the homicide, he went to Mrs. Kehl's, and she told him not to come again; and he went away, and returned in the afternoon, when the homicide was committed. This brief recital of some of the circumstances shown by the evidence for the people is sufficient to disclose an ample justification for the verdict. If the jury credited the evidence, it showed a homicidal act, intentionally done, with deliberation and premeditation, prompted by a definite human motive, or incited by anger or resentment.

The defense was insanity. The jury lound against it, and the evidence in its support was very weak. It was shown that when sober the defendant was a kind and industrious man. It appeared that he had been afflicted for some years with what the physicians called ‘ locomotor ataxia,’ which they described as a disease of the nervous system, producing extreme irritability and sleeplessness, affecting the movement of the limbs, rendering the brain more suseptible than it otherwise would have been to the influence of stimulants, and impairing the memory. Five or six years before the homicide the defendant had attempted suicide by taking poison, on account of his domestic troubles, and again attempted to stab himself on the occasion previously mentioned. He exhibited eccentricities of conduct for some time before the himicide. Witnesses testified to seeing him, early in the morning, standing in sight of Mrs. Kehl's house, watching apparently for his wife, and waving his handkerchief to any female he saw coming out of the house.

The court, in a fair charge, submitted all the facts to the jury. Upon reviewing them, we are unable to reach the conclusion that the case calls for the exercise of the jurisdiction to grant a new trial conferred upon this court by chapter 493 of the Laws of 1887. That authority, as we held in the Case of Cignarale, 110 N. Y. 23, 17 N. E. Rep. 135, is to be exercised under the restraint of settled rules; and the court will not interfere with the verdict of a jury, where it is supported by sufficient evidence, unless we reach the conclusion, on the whole case, that injustice has been done, or that there is a strong probability that injustice has been done, in the disposition made of the case by the jury.

The only exception which needs particular notice is that taken to questions put by the public prosecutor to the defendant on his cross-examination. The defendant was called and sworn as a witness in his own behalf; and his examination in chief was confined to questions calling for his age, nativity, place of birth, and the fact that he served as a soldier in...