Reyes v. State

• Decision Date: 14 July 1949
• Docket Number: 32603.
• Citation: 38 N.W.2d 539,151 Neb. 636
• Parties: REYES v. STATE.
• Court: Nebraska Supreme Court

38 N.W.2d 539

151 Neb. 636

REYES v. STATE.

No. 32603.

Supreme Court of Nebraska

July 14, 1949

Syllabus by the Court.

1. The rule is that to sustain a conviction for a crime the corpus delicti must be proved beyond a reasonable doubt.

2. The corpus delicti is the body or substance of the crime, the fact that a crime has been committed without regard to the identity of the person committing it.

3. The corpus delicti may, as any fact, be established by circumstantial evidence.

4. The fact that a person is fatally injured by a cause not established, and the defendant was the one last known to have been with such person before the injuries were sustained does not permit an inference that the injuries were feloniously inflicted. In such a situation, the presumption is that the injuries were not of criminal origin.

5. The crime of homicide is not established until it is proved that a human being is dead, and that the death occurred as the result of the criminal agency of another. The State must prove that the death was the result of a criminal act, and until it does so, the presumption is the cause of death was not criminal.

6. To justify a conviction on circumstantial evidence, it is necessary that the facts and circumstances essential to the conclusion sought must be proved by competent evidence beyond a reasonable doubt, and, when taken together must be of such a character as to be consistent with each other and with the hypothesis sought to be established thereby and inconsistent with any reasonable hypothesis of innocence.

7. In such a case, any fact or circumstance reasonably susceptible of two interpretations must be resolved most favorably to the accused.

8. Where circumstantial evidence is relied upon, the circumstances proven must relate directly to the guilt of the accused beyond all reasonable doubt in such a way as to exclude any other reasonable conclusion.

9. Circumstantial evidence should be weighed and acted upon cautiously, and a conviction should not be based upon suspicion, speculation, the weakness of the status of the accused, the embarrassing position in which he finds himself or the mere fact that some unfavorable circumstances are not satisfactorily explained.

10. In determining the sufficiency of circumstantial evidence to support a conviction, each case must be determined on its own peculiar circumstances.

Olsen & holtorf, Gering, for plaintiff in error.

James H. Anderson, Attorney General, William T. Gleeson, Assistant Attorney General, for defendant in error.

Heard before SIMMONS, C. J., and CARTER, MESSMORE, YEAGER, CHAPPELL WENKE, and BOSLAUGH, JJ.

BOSLAUGH Justice.

James Reyes designated herein as defendant, was convicted of the crime of murder in the second degree, and prosecutes error to review the record of his conviction.

On September 3, 1948, at about 9 a. m., two men and two women entered John's Tavern in Lyman, Nebraska. One was Jake Henry, a cowboy, and the women and the other man were unknown to the men in charge of the tavern, but the man was later identified as Freddie or Jake Burkheart. The women were referred to as the 'black-haired woman' and 'that blonde girl.' The record does not identify the woman with the blond hair. The other was later learned to be Avis Phillips, the victim of the alleged crime with which the defendant is accused. They indulged in conversation and drank beer.

James Reyes, the defendant, entered the tavern about 11 a. m., had a beer, and was later in company and drank beer with the four persons above referred to. He drank five or six bottles of beer and bought one round of beer for the others. Jake Henry and Avis Phillips were continuously in the tavern until she left with the defendant sometime between 2 p. m. and 3:30 p. m. She talked most of the time to Jake Henry, but had some conversation with the defendant. She told the defendant, while they were in the tavern, that she had to get out of Lyman, that a woman had to make a living, and she solicited the defendant to have immoral association with her for a monetary consideration. Defendant purchased a half-pint of whisky in the tavern, and shortly thereafter he departed from the tavern in company with Avis Phillips. They left Lyman in the automobile of the defendant, a Model A 1927 Ford tudor coach.

They traveled north and east from Lyman about two miles, about one-half mile west to a large cottonwood tree, remained there for about an hour, and engaged in the conduct in reference to which the deceased had solicited the defendant. They then traveled east about one-half mile and north some distance to a hay field, where they repeated their illicit indulgence. On the trip from Lyman to the cottonwood tree, they each drank a part of the whisky purchased by the defendant. The deceased had the bottle thereafter, and she drank the last of the whisky near the Mitchell Ditch, hereafter referred to. They decided to return to Lyman and drove south on a north and south road the first section line road, east of that town, and traveled but a short distance when the deceased, without warning, leaped from the car then moving about 15 miles an hour. She landed in the borrow pit by the side of the road. Defendant immediately stopped his car, inquired why she jumped, warned her it was dangerous, and that she might get killed. She made light of his anxiety. He asked her to get in his car and he would take her to town. She positively refused, and said she preferred to walk. He drove south on the highway about one-half mile. It was hot and he decided to turn around and go back and again offer her a ride. In turning around the back wheels of his car sank in the grade of the road and he had to get help to get it back on the road. A farmer, Henry Nolde, pulled him out with a tractor. In the meantime, the deceased had walked down the road past the place where the car was being pulled out. He drove south in the vicinity of the Mitchell Ditch, stopped his car, and asked the deceased to let him take her to town. She refused and he drove farther south, turned and drove north again until he came to the deceased, stopped his car, asked her to ride, and she got in the car. They then drove north. She complained she had no money, and that she had thrown the five dollars he had paid her when they were at the big cottonwood tree in the car as she jumped out the first time. They could not find the money in the car. They got north to the intersection with the road going east and slightly north, and stopped. She insisted that he take her to Morrill. This he agreed to do. They started down the road to the northeast at a speed of from 30 to 35 miles an hour. She said, 'Oh, what the hell, I don't want to go to Morrill,' opened the door and jumped out of the car. There was a noise as if something struck the car. 'At that time I heard something pound on my car * * *. I didn't know if she got hurt on the car door or if she got hurt on the side of the car * * *. I got scared.' The defendant did not know what to do. He continued to drive east on the highway. The distance he traveled east and the time involved are not definitely fixed. Sometime later he met a car traveling west, and he then returned to the place where Avis Phillips left the car. The man he had met who was traveling west, two other men, and Roy Coffin, the village marshal of Lyman, were there.

The marshal was told by George Ring and his son that a woman was lying in the road 'like maybe she had been hit with an automobile.' He went about to the intersection near Horse Creek Bridge, at the farm of Mr. Kramer, where there is a country road extending north and south, and from which a road proceeds in a slightly northeasterly direction, referred to as the lower road. 'It was just around the corner where the lady was laying on the road' northeast from the intersection of the two roads. Her head was near the edge of the shoulder of the road, her feet were about in the traveled part of the road, and her body was on an angle. This was sometime between 4 p. m. and 5:15 p. m.

on September 3, 1948. The body was about 60 yards northeast from the intersection, and on the right of the road looking from the intersection to the northeast. There was a shoe on her right foot. There was no shoe on the left foot, but the shoe she had been wearing, with the heel detached therefrom, was near her on the edge of the shoulder of the road. Her dress was torn around her right shoulder and her waist in the back. There was no one with the body of Avis Phillips when George Ring and Henry Ring saw it in the road before they went into Lyman and notified the marshal. The marshal, Irvin Freel, and James Reyes, the defendant, came there about the same time. Defendant denied knowing or having seen this woman before. Before he left he told the marshal he was going to, and would be in Lyman. A doctor arrived at the place where she was about 5 p. m. He examined her, found she was bleeding from her left ear, her nostrils, and her mouth, her left side was completely paralyzed, and she was unconscious. He attended her until her death on September 7, 1948. She did not regain consciousness.

He conducted an autopsy, and when he removed the top bone of her head 'there was kind of a watery fluid ran out * * *.' There was about one-sixteenth of an inch lapping of bone on the side of her head running from about the angle of the eye to the mid-occipital region in the posterior aspect of her head. The upper fragment of the bone over-lapped the lower temporal bone on the side of her head. There was a lot of blood inside the skull, a few adhesions attached to the dura and skull proper, much of the blood was directly in the brain tissue, and big clots of blood underneath the meninges of the brain. There was an area...