People v. Wood

• Decision Date: 14 April 1891
• Citation: 27 N.E. 362,126 N.Y. 249
• Parties: PEOPLE v. WOOD.
• Court: New York Court of Appeals Court of Appeals

126 N.Y. 249

27 N.E. 362

PEOPLE

v.WOOD.

Court of Appeals of New York.

April 14, 1891.

Appeal from court of oyer and terminer, Warren county.

J. M. Whitman, for appellant.

Francis A. Smith, for respondent.

PECKHAM, J.

This is an appeal from a judgment of conviction of defendant of murder in the first degree, entered upon a verdict rendered by a jury in the oyer and terminer of Warren county in September, 1890. Our jurisdiction to review directly such a judgment rests upon the statute, (chapter 493, Laws 1887.) Under that statute, this court can grant a new trial upon exceptions taken to the rulings of the trial court, and it can also grant such new trial when it is satisfied that the verdict was against the weight of evidence or that justice requires it. The defendant, through his counsel in this case, does not seek our interference under this latter provision of the act. He comes here upon exceptions, and asks a review thereof as his legal right and that a new trial shall be granted him because of legal error committed by the court below on his trial. Where exceptions have been taken by a defendant on a criminal trial, the court must give judgment without regard to technical errors or defects, or to exceptions which do not affect the substantial rights of the parties. Code Crim. Proc. § 542. Under this provision I think it plain that if evidence of a material nature, of a kind most important and predominating, shall have been offered on the part of defendant, and ruled out on the objection of the people, and under the exception of the defendant, such ruling is error which demands the reversal of the judgment of conviction. This is true even if the court might be inclined to think that, upon the whole, with such evidence admitted, the defendant should have been convicted. A defendant in a criminal prosecution is entitled to a legal trial, conducted in a proper way, and decided upon legal evidence. Where evidence of such a character has been offered on the part of the defendant, and erroneously rejected by the court, and if it is of a material nature, and if an exception has been duly taken, we are not at liberty, under the section of the Code of Criminal Procedure above cited, to say that the error is merely technical, or that the substantial rights of a defendant have not been affected. The defendant has the right to submit material evidence in his behalf to the jury in order that it may pass upon its weight and credibility, and, if he be deprived of that right, it is a substantial one, which, when properly presented to this court by an exception, will require a reversal of his conviction. This does not in the least affect the existence and force of the other and well-known rule that a new trial will not be granted, even in a criminal case, for an erroneous ruling of the court upon some legal proposition, where the appellate tribunal can see that by no possibility could the error have worked any harm to defendant. Stokes v. People, 53 N. Y. 164. In the case of the rejection of important, material, and competent evidence for the defendant, this court cannot say, unless in a most extraordinary case, that by no possibility could the error harm the defendant, or that such error was only technical, and that no substantial right of the defendant was affected. A substantial right of defendant in such case is affected, even though the appellate court would, with the evidence before it, still come to the same conclusion as the jury did without it. The defendant in such case has the right to insist that material and legal evidence offered in his behalf shall be received and submitted to a jury, and its opinion and verdict taken thereon, and not that of any merely appellate tribunal. On looking through and reading attentively the very voluminous record which has been presented to us in this case, I am satisfied that many errors were committed upon the trial, and, in the case of one at least, the error is of such a nature as to necessitate the reversal of the judgment.

A brief reference to the general facts of the case is all that is necessary to enable one to see the materiality of the evidence rejected by the court when offered on the part of the defendant. The evidence on the trial showed that the killing took place near a small village or hamlet called. Stony Creek, in the county of Warren, about 5 or 5:30 P. M., on the 10th of May, 1890. Leander Pasco, the deceased, was a small farmer or laboring man, living within a couple of miles of the above-named village, and was between 50 and 55 years of age. His wife had been dead a few years, and his daughter, about 10 years of age, was living with him, as was also a woman who occupied the position of his housekeeper. His sons, George and Alvin, respectively, about 20 and 16 years of age, were sometimes there, but had not been for a short time before the killing. A couple of months before that event the defendant had married a daughter of Pasco, and it is claimed that such marriage annoyed him, and he had ceased to be on friendly terms with defendant from that time. The marriage took place away from home, and Pasco did not know of it at the time. A few weeks before the killing the defendant took his wife, and went to a small house, or ‘shanty,’ as some of the witnesses called it, about a mile from Stony Creek, and there commenced housekeeping. There was evidence tending to show that the defendant was exceedingly fond of his wife, who was a young woman 22 or 23 years of age. The defendant was a man about 30 years of age, and was also a small farmer, or laboring man. Both the deceased and defendant belonged to a very uneducated, illiterate, and ignorant class, neither having acquired much property, and both spending a portion of their time in hunting and fishing. On the afternoon of the 10th of May (the day of the homicide) both men were seen in the village of Stony Creek, and were overheard in a war of words in the public streets, in which each accused the other of misconduct. The defendant was seen on his way home about 3 or 4 o'clock in the afternoon, and the deceased was seen passing out of the village in the direction of the road to his home, about 5 or 5:30 in the same afternoon. It was raining, and the deceased carried an umbrella and a small bundle, covered over with paper. A short distance from the village, and as the deceased was proceeding upon a lonely road, lined on each side with bushes and woods, except a portion of one side, where a small fallow of a couple of acres skirted the edge of the road, he was shot in the back by shot from a shotgun, and was instantly killed. No one saw the killing, and, although two reports of a gun were heard in quick succession at about half after 5, the deceased was not discovered until nearly dark, when he was accidently seen lying in the road by a man walking along it on his way home. The alarm was given, and the next day, Sunday, a critical examination was made. From it the people discovered the rags which had formed the wadding of the gun, foot-prints in the fallow from peculiar boots, which were soon seen to be exactly like those made by the boots worn by the defendant, who was present on the Sunday at the place where the body lay, and where quite a crowd had congregated. The rags were seen to be like the lining of defendant's coat, which was torn, and were subsequently most satisfactorily identified as coming from and forming part of such lining. Other evidence was given, which it is unnecessary to detail, but the whole showed quite satisfactorily that the defendant had perpetrated the killing. He had, however, in addition to the plea of not guilty, put in the further plea of insanity, and so evidence bearing upon that defense was offered and received. Evidence was given tending to show that the defendant, when a young boy, had been severely cut in the head by a blow from an axe, which had slipped out of the hands of his father, who was cutting wood, and there was evidence from which the jury might infer that the skull had been then fractured. He was unconscious for two or three hours, and was for some time quite ill from the immediate effects of the blow. Within a few years thereafter he fell from a barn, and struck on his head on a stony surface, and was again rendered unconscious for some hours. After these injuries it was claimed that he frequently acted in a strange manner,-not as he had formerly done. He often complained from that time of violent pains in his head, which rendered him unable to work. He had been guilty of acts which those who saw them characterized as irrational, such as pounding with his fist a lath and plaster wall until he had made a hole in it, without any apparent cause, and while sober, and claiming the next day not to remember anything about it. He had dressed in an eccentric and odd manner, in woman's clothes, over his trowsers, which were cut off below the knee, and in a woman's bonnet, and in such apparel had gone to ‘meeting’ and to school, although then grown up. He had been seen to trade off a good hat for a large hornet's nest, which he wore on his head instead of his hat for a long time. He was subject to some kind of discharge from his eyes, which difficulty would suddenly come upon him after he had complained of his head. He was also subject to sudden attacks of a kind of dizziness in the head, and temporary blindness consequent thereon, and had himself denominated such attacks his ‘blind staggers.’ He was eccentric, and was called odd, very vehement, and subject to great excitement on slight provocation. After his incarceration in jail on the charge of murder, he was examined by a physician, who claimed to find traces of the wound on his head; also what he thought was a fracture of the neck near the base of the skull, the effect of which was to prevent the defendant from turning his head as much as the ordinary man can. He also thought that he discovered that the...