State v. Arsenault

• Decision Date: 01 August 1956
• Citation: 124 A.2d 741,152 Me. 121
• Parties: STATE of Maine v. Elie Joseph ARSENAULT.
• Court: Maine Supreme Court

Page 741

124 A.2d 741

152 Me. 121

STATE of Maine v. Elie Joseph ARSENAULT.

Supreme Judicial Court of Maine.

Aug. 1, 1956.

Gaston M. Dumais, County Atty., Lewiston, for plaintiff.

Israel Alpren, Philip Isaacson, Lewiston, for respondent.

Before FELLOWS, C. J., WILLIAMSON, WEBBER, BELIVEAU and TAPLEY, JJ., and MURRAY, A. R. J.

FELLOWS, Chief Justice.

This is an indictment for murder on which Elie Joseph Arsenault was tried at the November term, 1954, of the Androscoggin County Superior Court. The verdict was guilty. The case now comes to the Law Court on respondent's exceptions to portions of the charge by the presiding Justice as given, and on exceptions for refusal to charge as requested.

In the case at bar, there is a motion to the Law Court for new trial, which was not directed to or passed upon by the Presiding Justice, and not now before the Law Court. State v. Bobb, 138 Me. 242, 25 A.2d 229; R.S.1954, Chapter 148, Section 30. The motion was not argued by counsel

The principal facts contained in nearly four hundred pages of record are briefly these: Elie Joseph Arsenault, otherwise known as Joseph Elie Arsenault, a taxi driver in Auburn, Maine, in the early fall of 1952 first met the deceased, Harriet Hinckley, who had been a nurse, and who was then a widow with a small amount of money left to her by her husband. Mrs. Hinckley moved into the apartment next to that occupied by Arsenault and his wife. While Mrs. Arsenault was away working, the neighbor acquaintance of Joe Arsenault and Harriet Hinckley grew steadily into an intimate friendship, because they were both deeply interested in alcohol. The respondent became messenger and agent for Mrs. Hinckley in the withdrawal of her money to buy liquor. They had long drinking bouts together, with intimate relations.

The respondent testified that on Tuesday, June 29, he, the respondent, received a telephone call from the deceased summoning him over. She wanted to do some drinking, and then visit a daughter in Brunswick. He called for her and they traveled to Auburn where he purchased two pints of whiskey. These were consumed on the road between Auburn and Brunswick, and at the daughter's home. While in Brunswick, pints three and four were purchased. Pint three they drank in Brunswick.

The respondent further testified that late Tuesday evening, the pair left Brunswick. Prior to leaving, Mrs. Hinckley asked her daughter for her revolver, because she had a chance to sell it. She placed the gun in her purse. Pint four was disposed of in Durham, and they fell asleep in the parked automobile. On arising Wednesday, June 30, 1954, they returned to Lewiston and bought pints five and six. These were transported back to Durham where they were consumed. They then returned to Auburn, and pint seven was purchased. This was drunk in Auburn at the home of a friend during the afternoon. A messenger was employed to obtain pint eight, and this was likewise disposed of.

The respondent said that in the evening they left the friend's home and obtained pint nine. At one point on the trip there was an altercation between Mrs. Hinckley and the respondent, and 'she slapped me.' What the quarrel was about does not appear. Joe said he 'was in a fog,' and did not remember if she was intoxicated or not, nor who was driving the car. Joe had a gun of his own, and Mrs. Hinckley had a gun of her own. They returned to the Durham road and remained until after dark. The bottle was finished, and the home where Mrs. Hinckley had been employed as a nurse became the destination, as the owners were away. Pints ten and eleven had been hidden there. In a bedroom of the home, the couple drank these, and the respondent said he commenced to 'pass out.' Mrs. Hinckley then produced some barbiturates, two of which the respondent swallowed. These pills, he said, made his condition worse. He sat down on the edge of a bed. She was lying next to him. He said she had the gun. She was familiar with guns. He testified that he remembers nothing more.

The respondent testified that when he awoke on Friday morning, Mrs. Hinckley lay dead of a bullet wound. He said he acquired some additional whiskey and recalls almost nothing of the next two days. On Friday afternoon, the police arrived at the death room, at the telephone call of the respondent himself. They found the body of the deceased covered with flowers and religious insignia.

The evidence of the State was to the effect that the respondent telephoned the police, and when the police arrived, Arsenault admitted the shooting of Mrs. Hinckley because he 'loved her.' One officer said 'that woman is dead,' and respondent Arsenault replied, 'Why shouldn't she be? I shot her.' The respondent also told the officers that she asked him to take the gun and to shoot her. In substance, the respondent also told the officers the story as told by him when in Court at the trial. The State showed that Mrs. Hinckley's son-in-law took a gun away from the respondent some weeks before the shooting, because the respondent was in the yard at Brunswick pointing the gun at Mrs. Hinckley, threatening to shoot her. Mrs. Hinckley at that time, in the presence of her daughter, son-in-law, and the respondent, at the daughter's house, told her son-in-law 'to put the gun away so that he will not shoot.' Mrs. Hinckley and the respondent then were on 'a drinking bout.' Mrs. Hinckley got the gun back from her daughter just before the day of the shooting by telling the daughter that 'she and Joe had a chance to sell it.'

From the State's case a jury would be authorized in finding beyond a reasonable doubt that Harriet Hinckley died as the result of a bullet wound. The respondent admitted that he fired the shot, and his testimony is corroborated by evidence that the fatal bullet in the body of Harriet Hinckley was fired from a revolver, which revolver was in the possession of the respondent at the time he was arrested. The procuring of the gun and the use of it indicate premeditation. In addition to this, there are many facts sufficient to imply malice. The evidence nowhere indicates that this implication is in any manner rebutted.

It is sufficient in every indictment for murder to charge that the defendant did feloniously, willfully, and with malice aforethought kill and murder a human being. R.S.1954, Chapter 145, Section 11.

Whoever unlawfully kills a human being with malice aforethought, either express or implied, is guilty of murder. R.S.1954, Chapter 130, Section 1.

Manslaughter is the unlawful killing of a human being without malice aforethought, express or implied. Manslaughter may be in the heat of passion or on sudden provocation, or it may even be accidental. R.S.1954, Chapter 130, Section 8; Chapter 22, Section 151; State v. Pond, 125 Me. 453, 134 A. 572; State v. Turmel, 148 Me. 1, 7, 88 A.2d 367.

Where there are statutory degrees of murder (as formerly in Maine) intoxication may sometimes reduce from first to second degree murder. Intoxication will not reduce to manslaughter where there is malice aforethought, and where there is no provocation or sudden passion. Voluntary intoxication is no excuse for murder. 'Voluntary intoxication is not an excuse, or justification, or extenuation of a crime.' Com. v. Hawkins, 3 Gray, Mass., 463, 466; Commonwealth v. Malone, 114 Mass., 295. See 26 Am.Jur. 233, Sec. 116, 'Homicide' and cases cited; 40 C.J.S., Homicide § 5 p. 830, and the cases there cited.

When the fact of killing is proved and nothing further is shown, the presumption of law is that it is malicious and an act of murder. State v. Knight, 43 Me. 11; State v. Neal, 37 Me. 468; State v. Turmel, 148 Me. 1, 88 A.2d 367; Commonwealth v. York, 9 Metc., Mass., 93; Commonwealth v. Webster, 5 Cush., Mass., 295.

'Malice,' as used in the definition of murder, does not necessarily imply ill will or hatred. It is a wrongful act, known to be such, and intentionally done without just and lawful cause or excuse. State v. Merry, 136 Me. 243, 8 A.2d 143; State v. Knight, 43 Me. 11; State v. Robbins, 66 Me. 324.

Voluntary intoxication is not an excuse for crime, except in those cases where knowledge or specific intent are necessary elements. 'Intoxication does not make innocent an otherwise criminal act.' State v. Siddall, 125 Me. 463, 464, 134 A. 691.

As the Court say in State v. Quigley, 135 Me. 435, 443, 199 A. 269, 274, "It is still held by an overwhelming weight of judicial authority that (it is) when the insanity of the accused is pleaded in defense' ability to distinguish between right and wrong is the test. State v. Knight [95 Me. 467, 50 A. 276, 55 L.R.A. 373].

In the case at bar, insanity is not the plea.

'When it is attempted to prove the presence of insanity, madness, in early cases termed phrenzy, a test uniformly applied is to determine whether or not the one charged with doing a criminal act possessed, at the time of the act capacity to know the difference between right and wrong.'

The following charge has been held proper where the indictment was for an intent to kill: "If it appears from the evidence that the prisoner was intoxicated at the time, and if you find that his state of intoxication was such that he had so far lost his intelligence, and his reason and faculties, that you have a reasonable doubt whether he was able to form and have a purpose to kill, or to know what he was doing, then you should find him not guilty of intent to kill." (Emphasis ours.) State v. Quigley, 135 Me. 435, 443, 199 A. 269, 274.

The criterion for determining whether or not a jury verdict in a criminal case should be set aside and a new trial ordered is: In view of all the testimony, was the jury warranted in believing beyond a reasonable doubt that the respondent was guilty? State v. DiPietrantonio, 119 Me. 18, 19, 109 A. 186; State v. Pond, 125 Me. 453, 454, 134 A. 572; State v. Albanes, 109 Me. 199, 83 A. 548; State v. Lambert, 97 Me. 51, 53 A. 879; State v. Priest,...