State v. Bell
| Decision Date | 20 November 1896 |
| Citation | 37 S.W. 823,136 Mo. 120 |
| Parties | The State v. Bell, Appellant |
| Court | Missouri Supreme Court |
Appeal from Dallas Circuit Court.
Affirmed.
R. F Walker, attorney general, for the state.
The court will not consider the bill of exceptions which is embodied in the transcript in this case, for the reason that the same has not been signed by the judge who tried the cause. R. S. 1889, sec. 2167; Garth v. Caldwell, 72 Mo. 622. This being true, defendant's appeal must be determined from the record proper on which the judgment should be affirmed; the indictment charging the crime in the language of the statute and there being no error prejudicial to the rights of the defendant.
At the September term, 1893, of the circuit court of Webster county James Bell was indicted for the murder of John Harrison on the second day of September, 1893. He was duly arraigned and the cause continued to the March term, 1894, at which last mentioned term he applied for and obtained a change of venue to Dallas county. In the Dallas court he moved to dismiss the cause on account of certain inaccuracies in the transcript certified by the clerk of the Webster court, which motion was overruled and at the October term, 1894, his case was again continued. He was put on trial at the March term, 1895, and convicted of murder in the second degree and his punishment assessed at forty years in the state penitentiary, from which sentence he appeals to this court. The transcript was certified to this court in July last.
We are again constrained to call attention of the circuit and criminal courts to these inexcusable delays in certifying criminal causes to this court and to ask their co-operation in preventing them in the future.
The defendant is not represented by counsel in this court but we have gone laboriously through a great mass of evidence and the whole record to ascertain whether reversible error was committed on the trial.
The facts surrounding the case are very meagre. The defendant was a man about sixty-two years old. He had been a great drunkard. His custom was to go to Marshfield about once a week and invariably become intoxicated. When drunk he was exceedingly disagreeable. There is no evidence of previous bad blood between the deceased and the defendant. The deceased Harrison was a young married man. He was engaged in running a threshing machine for a neighbor and on the day he was killed had come to Marshfield horseback. It appears that during the night the defendant and others had congregated on the platform of the railroad station of the St. Louis & San Francisco Railroad, which has a line through said town. A young man by the name of Connelly and the defendant had had a difficulty and were engaged in a wordy altercation when Harrison, the deceased, came to the station. Harrison at once stepped up to the defendant and placed his hand on his shoulder and said, "Hello, Uncle Jim, what is all this about." Thereupon defendant desisted from his quarrel with Connelly and walked aside with deceased out of the hearing of the other bystanders. After talking for sometime in an apparently friendly manner they started back to the depot and when they had come within a few feet of the others, defendant was heard to say "Old Jim Bell wouldn't kill a man," and then Harrison said to him, "I had my mind made up once to fix your old flint," or words to that effect, whereupon defendant answered, "You thought you would fix old Jim, did you?" and holding his head down a moment with his hand in his pocket he suddenly threw his left hand on Harrison's shoulder or around him and struck him three licks with his right hand in rapid succession, and immediately turned and ran away. Harrison staggered and clasped his hands to his side and said, "Boys, he's got me." "I am hurt and bad hurt."
An examination disclosed that defendant had stabbed deceased five times inflicting five different incised wounds. The knife penetrated the abdominal cavity and entered the bowels in the ascending colon. This wound was pronounced mortal and from it he died the next day.
The defense was insanity. Dipsomania was the alleged form of insanity. There was much evidence to establish this theory both medical and otherwise.
On the part of the state the proof tended strongly to prove that Bell was perfectly rational and capable of transacting all his business when sober, but was a violent and dangerous man when drunk.
The court submitted the question of insanity to the jury under instructions that have been approved again and again in this court. The defendant prayed certain instructions which the court properly refused. Several were merely repetitions of those given by the court ex mero motu and the others contained the doctrine that defendant was only bound to raise a reasonable doubt as to his insanity and was not bound to establish his insanity by a preponderance of the evidence and of course should have been refused as the law has been settled to the contrary since Baldwin v. State, 12 Mo. 223. State v. Redemeier, 71 Mo. 173; State v. Pagels,...
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