State v. Besancon

• Decision Date: 13 February 1911
• Docket Number: 18,581
• Citation: 54 So. 480,128 La. 85
• Court: Louisiana Supreme Court
• Parties: STATE v. BESANCON et al

54 So. 480

128 La. 85

STATE v. BESANCON et al

No. 18,581

Supreme Court of Louisiana

February 13, 1911

Rehearing Denied March 13, 1911.

Appeal from Criminal District Court, Parish of Orleans; F. D Chretien, Judge.

Eugene Besancon and Francois Rodin were found guilty of murder, and appeal. Affirmed.

E. A O'Sullivan, for appellants.

St Clair Adams, Dist. Atty., and Warren Doyle, Asst. Dist. Atty., for the State.

OPINION

LAND, J.

The accused were indicted for the murder of one Franz Hermann Reidel. Both were found guilty as charged, and were sentenced to be hanged. The accused have appealed, and rely for reversal on several bills of exception.

Reidel was murdered, and his dead body, inclosed in a sack, was found in the waters of the Old Basin. His person had been rifled of his pocketbook, watch, and chain. Suspicion pointed its finger at Besancon as the murderer, and his room as the place of the homicide. Besancon was arrested, and made a statement to the district attorney implicating Rodin as chief actor in the bloody tragedy. Thereupon Rodin was arrested, and, in turn, made a statement to the same official incriminating Besancon as the leader in the work of murder and robbery.

These two statements were reduced to writing in the form of questions and answers, which were signed by the accused, respectively.

On the trial of the cause these statements or confessions were offered in evidence on behalf of the prosecution, and counsel for the accused made objection, as follows, to wit:

"I object to the introduction of the confession on the ground that it is not a free and voluntary confession, but merely a series of interrogatives propounded by the district attorney."

The prosecution had introduced evidence to show that the confession was the free and voluntary act of the accused, who adduced no evidence whatever to the contrary.

After a careful perusal of the evidence, we concur in the finding of the trial judge that:

"The testimony in the case will satisfy any one that the confessions of both Besancon and Rodin were voluntary and freely given."

The accused had the opportunity to prove prior duress unknown to the officer who received the confessions, if any such duress had been exercised. The motives for the confessions are obvious. That of Besancon was to save his own neck by holding out Rodin as the actual perpetrator of the murder, and himself as an unwilling assistant. That of Rodin was to...