State v. Carlson
| Decision Date | 15 February 1927 |
| Citation | 212 N.W. 312,203 Iowa 90 |
| Parties | STATE OF IOWA, Appellee, v. HAROLD CARLSON, Appellant |
| Court | Iowa Supreme Court |
Appeal from Dubuque District Court.--P. J. NELSON, Judge.
Trial on an indictment for murder in the first degree, resulting in a verdict of murder in the second degree. The defendant was given a life sentence.
Affirmed.
Ed. C Tschudi, for appellant.
John Fletcher, Attorney-general, Herbert A. Huff, Assistant Attorney-general, and Allen J. Kane, County Attorney, for appellee.
DE GRAFF, J.
On November 3, 1925, the grand jury of Dubuque County, Iowa jointly indicted Harold Carlson, Donald Kerdell, Dorrance E Lyons, and Henry Truda for the crime of murder. The act upon which the indictment is predicated resulted in the death of Leo P. Hemmer, who was at the time the jailer of the Dubuque County jail.
It appears that, on the morning of October 12, 1925, about 35 prisoners were confined in said jail, including the defendants named in the instant indictment and one Earl Stearns, who fired the shots causing the death of Jailer Hemmer. The act giving rise to the indictment herein was a jail delivery. Stearns was subsequently shot and killed in Illinois. The codefendant Dorrance E. Lyons was convicted of first-degree murder, and sentenced to life imprisonment. This judgment was affirmed by this court. State v. Lyons, 202 Iowa 1195, 211 N.W. 702.
The defendant, Harold Carlson, alias Clarence Olson, was held in the Dubuque County jail, at the time in question, on a mittimus, pending an investigation by the grand jury of Dubuque County on a charge of robbery, as he was unable to furnish bail in the sum of $ 5,000. The appellant, Carlson, contends that the State was not legally privileged to show the reason for his detention in the county jail at and prior to the morning of October 12th, when the fatal shooting occurred. We do not accept this viewpoint. Motive for a criminal act is always a proper subject of inquiry, although not an essential ingredient of the crime charged. Clearly, it was competent to show that appellant was an inmate of the jail at the time, and the challenged evidence did no more than to prove that the appellant was charged with a crime, and not his conviction thereof. The fact proved was but an incident of the facts attending the crime for which he was indicted and placed on trial.
The numerous brief points of appellant, so far as the same are reviewable in this court, focus about one proposition, to wit, the sufficiency of the evidence to sustain the verdict. The underlying and fundamental theory of this case is conspiracy, and the ultimate question involves the competency and the weight of the evidence to sustain this theory. There is no conflict in the testimony as to the proximate and causative facts and circumstances surrounding the death of Jailer Hemmer. When the State rested its case, the defendant rested.
The evidence establishes that the codefendant Lyons had been released from the jail on October 8, 1925, and that, prior and subsequent to his release, there had been an understanding between him and Stearns, Carlson, Kerdell, and Truda that he should procure a revolver and furnish same to these men for the purpose of effecting an escape from jail. It is undisputed that Lyons did this. He was paid $ 4.50 by these men to purchase the revolver, and on the very day he was released (October 8th), he stole a 25-caliber Colt automatic, and on that evening went to the county jail, paid a visit to Truda, and informed him that he had the gun.
According to Truda's testimony, Stearns was talking
This plan was carried out, with the exception that Stearns shot the jailer, immediately prior to the escape of Stearns, Kerdell, and Lyons from the jail.
It is further shown that these men, while they were in jail, were in conference together quite frequently. One Brown, an inmate of the jail, testified...
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