State v. Doyle

• Decision Date: 08 June 1968
• Docket Number: No. 45058,45058
• Citation: 441 P.2d 846,201 Kan. 469
• Parties: The STATE fo Kansas, Appellee, v. Delmar G. DOYLE, Appellant.
• Court: Kansas Supreme Court

Page 846

441 P.2d 846

201 Kan. 469

The STATE fo Kansas, Appellee, v. Delmar G. DOYLE, Appellant.

No. 45058.

Supreme Court of Kansas.

June 8, 1968.

Syllabus by the Court

1. In a homicide case, the corpus delicti is the body or substance of the crime which consists of the killing of the decedent by some criminal agency, and is established by proof of the two facts, that one person was killed, and that another person killed him.

2. The corpus delicti may be proved by the direct testimony of persons who saw the act, or by indirect and circumstantial evidence, or partly by one and partly by the other; it is never presumed and proof of death alone is not sufficient to establish the corpus delicti.

3. Proof of the corpus delicti, like any other element of the crime, is to be established by competent evidence beyond a reasonable doubt; the rule being that the best evidence which, in the nature of the case, is attainable should be produced, and to sustain conviction, all of the facts must be consistent with each other and with the main fact to be proved, and be so conclusive as to exclude all reasonable doubt. Following State v. Cardwell, 90 Kan. 606, 135 P. 597, L.R.A.1916B, 745.

4. Where the circumstances point no more strongly to criminal homicide than to death by natural causes, accident or suicide, it must be shown the death did not result from accidental or natural causes, and was not suicidal.

5. Motive, though an important factual element in the prosecution for crime, is not sufficient in itself to sustain a conviction.

6. In a circumstantial case, it is the duty of this court to determine whether there is a basis in the evidence for a reasonable inference of the defendant's guilt.

7. Our law recognizes that a jury shall be the exclusive judge of all material questions of fact, but upon the question whether there is present any evidence whatever of a particular material fact, the jury is not the exclusive judge; the law requires that the court determine that question as a matter of law.

8. Presumption and inferences may be drawn only from facts established, and presumption may not rest upon presumption or inference on inference, and the rule is doubly applicable in cirminal cases.

9. Conviction for murder must be grounded on something more than probabilities, possibilities or suspicions of guilt.

10. The record in a criminal prosecution for the crime of murder is examined, and it is held: The evidence adduced is insufficient as a matter of law to support and sustain the verdict rendered.

Russell Shultz, Wichita, argued the cause, and Larry Kirby, Wichita, was with him on the brief, for appellant.

Donald H. Humphreys, County Atty., argued the cause, and Robert C. Londerholm, Atty. Gen., and Robert L. Bates, Asst. County Atty., were with him on the brief, for appellee.

FATZER, Justice:

The defendant, Delmar G. Doyle, was charged in an information which alleged that on or about the 10th day of March, 1966, in the county of Barton, he did unlawfull, feloniously and wilfully, maliciously, deliberately, premeditatedly, on purpose and with malice aforethought, inflict a mortal wound upon one Lawrence Lee Crouse by shooting said Crouse in the head with a firearm from which would the said Crouse died on or about the 10th day of March, 1966, and that the defendant did kill and murder said Crouse in violation of K.S.A. 21-401. The information was duly verified by the county attorney.

The complaint charging murder in the first degree was filed on July 14, 1966. Following a freliminary examination which was held in Great Bend on August 11, 1966, the information was filed in the district court on August 16, 1966.

On November 21, 1966, the defendant was arraigned and entered a plea of not guilty. A pretrial motion for a bill of particulars was filed asking that the state set out as nearly as possible the time within which death was known by it to have occurred. The motion was overruled. Later the motion was renewed and again overruled.

The trial was had before a jury beginning on March 8, 1967. At the close of the state's evidence, the defendant moved for discharge which ruling was reserved by the court, and the defendant then presented his evidence. At the close of the trial on March 14, 1967, the jury returned its verdict finding 'the defendant guilty of murder in the second degree as defined in the instructions and included in the information.' The defendant moved the court not to accept the verdict of the jury and renewed his motion for discharge. Following the argument, the court overruled the motion. A motion for a new trial containing six grounds was filed, argued and overruled, and the defendant was sentenced to the Kansas State Penitentiary for a period of not less than ten years as a minimum sentence and a period of not more than ten years as a maximum sentence, or until discharged according to law.

On the facts appearing in the record, which will be hereafter narrated, the defendant seeks reversal mainly on the grounds that the state's evidence was insufficient to prove the corpus delicti and was not so conclusive as to exclude all reasonable doubt and every reasonable hypothesis except guilt, and that there was no basis in the evidence for a reasonable inference of the defendant's guilt. It should be noted the state's brief contains the statement that it agrees with the defendant's statement of facts and with minor exceptions adopted the same.

The state concedes the evidence that someone was criminally responsible for the decedent's death was all circumstantial, and due to that fact, the events and circumstances leading up to the charges filed against the defendant will be fully detailed.

On Saturday, March 12, 1966, the decedent was found dead in his automobile at approximately 9:00 o'clock a.m. by Herman Steitz, a pumper for the Bergman Oil Company. The automobile was located on a road leading from a public road up to an oil lease and tank battery. The location of the lease was five miles south, three and one-half miles east, and one-half mile south of Great Bend. The lease is owned by the Bergman Oil Company and is known as the Welch lease.

On Thursday, March 10, at approximately 2:30 p.m. Steitz was on the Welch lease road and there was nothing unusual. He was on the lease road the next day, Friday, March 11, at about 2:30 p.m. and a light colored Plymouth station wagon was parked on the east side of the road with a man slumped over against the left front window and he thought the man was asleep. He drove past the car and went on without stopping to make inquiry. The next morning, Saturday, March 12, at approximately 9:00 o'clock a.m. he again was on the lease road and the car was still there with the man in it. He stopped and saw that the man in the car had a gun in his hand and he immediately went to the farm home of Joe Hall and called the sheriff's office. He did not open any of the car doors, nor did he touch the car. Michael R. Prather, the head pumper for the Bergman Oil Company, was in the immediate vicinity of the Welch lease between 7:30 and 8:00 o'clock on Friday morning, March 11, and he saw the light colored station wagon parked on the Welch lease road. Later in the day, he had occasion to be on a lease about 1/4 mile west of the station wagon and it was still parked in the same position.

Upon receiving Steitz's call at 9:19 a.m., Jess Torrez, the deputy sheriff of Barton County, who was in charge of the office while the sheriff was out of the city, contacted the county attorney. Brock McPherson, the county attorney, Torrez, and Tom Van Brimmer, a newspaper photographer, immediately went to the scene, arriving there between 9:30 and 9:45 a.m. They found a tan or off-white colored 1966 Plymouth station wagon parked on the east side of the lease road, which ran in a north-south direction. The automobile was headed to the north. The automobile was closed, except the left front door and the right rear door were not latched securely, and the rear glass of the station wagon was open to some extent, variously described as simply open, and open six to eight inches.

The decedent, the owner of the station wagon, was seated behind the steering wheel, slumped forward and against the window glass of the door on the driver's side of the automobile. He had a single bullet wound which was at the upper extremity of the right cheek immediately beneath the bone. There was profuse bleeding from the wound and from the mouth of the decedent, so that there was blood over the seat, some of which had drained down between the seat portion and the back portion of the front seat onto the floorboard between the front and back seat of the automobile. There was blood spattered on the steering wheel, the steering column, the left front door panel, the seat, the clothing of the decedent, the dash, and on the decedent's right hand. A spot was on the inside panel of the right rear door, but it was never established to be blood. The blood on the seat and on the floorboard behind the front seat was still wet.

A .22 caliber pistol was on the seat beside the body and the right hand of the decedent was over the pistol. Part of the hand was touching the pistol which was pointing away from the body, but it was not gripped in the hand. Photographs were made of the inside and outside of the automobile, the decedent, and the scene before anything was moved. A photograph of the decedent's right hand showed a spattering of blood on the hand and a spot of blood on the barrel of the gun near the front sight. The pistol was carefully removed from under the decedent's hand and placed in a plastic bag, and the body was removed and taken to the Central Kansas Medical Center where a post-mortem examination was performed. The automobile was locked and towed into Great Bend and stored in a warehouse. There was no indication from any physical evidence at the scene that any other person had been in the automobile,...