State v. Baldes

• Decision Date: 05 February 1907
• Citation: 110 N.W. 440,133 Iowa 158
• Parties: STATE v. BALDES.
• Court: Iowa Supreme Court

133 Iowa 158

110 N.W. 440

STATE

v.BALDES.

Supreme Court of Iowa.

Feb. 5, 1907.

Appeal from District Court, Sioux County; J. L. Kennedy, Judge.

From a conviction of murder in the second degree the defendant appeals. The opinion states the essential facts. Affirmed.George T. Hatley, for appellant.

C. W. Mullan, Atty. Gen., and L. De Graff, Asst. Atty. Gen., for the State.

WEAVER, C. J.

The defendant was convicted of the murder of his wife, and sentenced to the penitentiary for life.

1. The first proposition advanced for the reversal of the judgment below is upon the sufficiency of the evidence to sustain a conviction. The evidence tends to show that there was, and for some time had been, a lack of harmony between the defendant and his wife. He is evidently a man of violent if not brutal temper, and we may draw the inference that she, at times at least, was not careful to avoid exciting his anger. On the day of the alleged murder they had an angry passage of words over a trifling matter soon after which the wife left the house, going to a straw pile in the barn yard for the purpose of filling a straw “tick,” or mattress, where she was soon followed by the defendant. Of what first took place on defendant's arrival at the straw pile, there is no living witness but himself. A son of the parties, a boy of 14 years, saw them go in that direction and soon afterward, hearing the sound of a quarrel or wrangle of some kind, he looked up and saw the defendant with his hands upon his wife, pushing her about. The witness called his older sister and they both ran to the barnyard. Defendant still held the deceased in his clench pushing her around. The children armed with hoe and pitchfork sought to interfere in defense of their mother, but were driven back by their father who then renewed the assault upon the deceased, throwing her down, in which position he contined to maltreat her. In the words of one of the children “he was on his right leg or knee on the straw with his left knee on mother's stomach with his hands on mother's breast and neck pushing up and down.” When he released her, the deceased arose and walked in a stooped or crippled manner in the direction of the house to an upturned wagon box on which she sat down. Here the defendant again approached her and seized her by the neck and breast and forced her backward on the box. He was not seen to kick or strike her. She again rose and started for the house when defendant took her by the arm and according to the children “kind of dragged her along.” After they had disappeared together in the house, the boy says he looked through the window and saw his mother sitting in a bent position his father holding her with one hand and brandishing a butcher knife with the other. In this he is also corroborated by his sister. At this juncture the boy procured an ax and going to the kitchen door threw it at his father, hitting him upon the shoulder. Thereupon defendant released the deceased and turned in pursuit of the boy, and about the same time deceased arose and had reached the door of the sitting room when she was seen to fall in an apparent faint. Defendant at once returned and with the children carried the deceased to the porch and tried to revive her, but without success. She seems to have been dead from the time of her fall in the door. Going to town defendant reported that his wife had died of heart disease. The undertaker in preparing the body for burial found bruises or discolorations indicating physical injury upon the woman's arms, shoulders, and back, also upon her legs and groin, though none of apparently extreme gravity. A somewhat superficial autopsy disclosed nothing abnormal except a congestion of the pancreas and of the areolar tissue below the diaphragm and cross the stomach and over the aorta. It was the opinion of at least some of the physicians that the injuries indicated by these various marks contributed to the woman's death. One physician who assisted at the examination testifies that, in his opinion, the injury to the areolar tissue was caused by external violence, and that the shock might have caused death. As a witness in his own behalf defendant admits the truth of much of the story told by the children, but claims that deceased was the aggressor in the struggle at the straw pile, and denies that he choked her, or put his knee upon her, or otherwise severely injured her. He concedes that he followed her to the wagon box, and, being provoked by the epithets she applied to him, he seized and pushed her over, holding her there about half a minute. According to his story when when he followed her into the house she armed herself with a butcher knife and threatened to disembowel him, at which threat he caught hold of her and wrenched the knife from her hand. It was at this juncture, he claims, that the boy and girl arrived and discovered him in possession of the weapon. He swears that for 10 years deceased had been complaining of heart trouble, and it is the theory of the defense that...