State v. Ehlers

• Decision Date: 20 November 1922
• Docket Number: No. 90.,90.
• Citation: 119 A. 15
• Parties: STATE v. EHLERS.
• Court: New Jersey Supreme Court

119 A. 15

STATE

v. EHLERS.

No. 90.

Court of Errors and Appeals of New Jersey.

Nov. 20, 1922.

(Syllabus by the Court.)

Error to Court of Oyer and Terminer, Bergen County.

Martin Ehlers was convicted of murder in the first degree, and he brings error. Affirmed.

Arthur M. Agnew and Jos. H. Gaudielle, both of Hackensack, for plaintiff in error.

Archibald C. Hart, Prosecutor of the Pleas, and Charles J. McCarthy, Asst. Prosecutor of the Pleas, both of Hackensack, for the State.

WHITE, J. The verdict of the jury found the defendant, a laborer twenty-eight years old, guilty of murder in the first degree as charged in the indictment, and there was no recommendation of life imprisonment. The indictment charged the nrurder of defendant's son, Walter, who was proved to be between six and seven years of age. There was another indictment against the defendant for murdering his wife, but there has been no trial as yet under this other indictment.

The defendant, who, it appears, did not stay employed very long at any place, and who had moved from Hoboken with his wife and three children into two attic bedrooms in a farmhouse near Woodridge in October, and then, losing his job in February, had left his family at Woodridge and gone to live with his "folks" in Hoboken while seeking work, and came to Woodridge on the afternoon or night in question to see his family, seems to have first shot his wife at about 11 o'clock at night from the landing at the head of the stairs, as she, in answer to his call, came up the stairs to the attic bedroom where he and their three children were. He then stepped back into the bedroom, "broke"—that is, opened the breech of—the single-barrel shotgun with which he had just shot his wife, ejected the exploded shell, took another loaded shell from the box of shells on the shelf, loaded the gun with it, shot his seven year old son Walter, who was getting out of bed as a result of being awakened by the noise of the first shot, again "broke" the gun, ejecting the second exploded shell (there were two freshly discharged shells found in the room, one on the bed, and the other by Walter's body on the floor), took another loaded shell from the box (three shells were missing from the full box after the shooting), put it in the gun, but got the "finger" of the ejector outside or back of the rim of the shell, and in trying to force the gun closed with the shell in this position "jammed" it so tightly as to prevent either another discharge of the gun or a removal of the shell in the usual manner. He then ran down the stairs and out of the house and along a grassy path, by the side of which he either dropped or placed the gun (it was found there some hours later with the jammed loaded shell still in it), and went to a hotel in Woodridge where the chief marshal of the town was standing talking with a Mr. Kerr, one of the councilmen, and first saying, "Buy me a package of cigarettes, chief, and I will tell you a story and give you a good job," told the chief that he, the defendant, had shot his child and his wife. Some hours later the same night the defendant made a statement or confession (after being warned that he was charged with murder, and that anything he might say he must say voluntarily, and that it would be used against him) by which statement he admitted the killing, and gave a number of details among which were his locking his wife out of the bedroom before the shooting, leaving himself and their three children in it, and afterwards opening the door and calling her up the stairs and shooting her as she came up, and, in answer to the question of what was his reason, said, "I have reasons of my own; I intended to do away with all of us." This statement or confession was made in the presence of a number of witnesses, was taken down in writing, and signed by the defendant and by the witnesses who heard it, and this writing was produced at the trial, but was not put in evidence; the witnesses who heard the statement testifying from memory to so much of what defendant said in making the statement as related to the murder of Walter.

At the trial the state introduced only evidence of the nrurder of Walter, and put in no evidence as to the practically simultaneous shooting of the wife, and the defendant observed a like reticence upon the same subject. The result was that the only evidence which percolated into the testimony as tending to give even a faint outline of the other half of this terrible picture was the statement by the defendant, when testifying in his own behalf, that he told the chief marshal that be had shot his child and wife, and then the testimony as to the two freshly discharged shells in the room and the three shells missing from the box of shells.

Under these circumstances the defendant now claims that the court should reverse and set aside the judgment on the ground that the verdict was against the weight of the evidence, In that: (1) The state by failing, as defendant alleges it did fail, to prove any motive for the murder of defendant's son, has failed to establish that the killing was willful, deliberate, and premeditated; and (2) the alleged absence of proof of motive taken in conjunction with the very meager testimony of previous alleged subnormal mental history, and the usual contradictory testimony of, mental and medical experts, pro and con, should induce the court to conclude that defendant was somewhat of an epileptic, and that at the time of the killing he was suffering from a secret unobservable form of this disease called "petit mal," and not accountable for, because not conscious of, what he was doing.

We do not agree with either of these contentions. As to the first one, proof of motive is not an essential element in a conviction of murder in the first degree. If the proved facts established that the defendant in fact did the killing willfully, that is, with intent to kill (which is presumed from the proof of the killing until the contrary appears—State v. Zellers, 7 N. J. Law, 220; Brown v. State, 62 N. J. Law, 666, 42 Atl. 811), and as the result of premeditation and deliberation, thereby implying preconsideration and determination, there is murder in the first degree, no matter what defendant's motive may have been, nor although he in fact had no motive (using the word in its usual sense of self-serving reason) whatsoever. Suppose, for instance, that this defendant, out of work as he was and unable to supply with the cost of the necessities of life his wife and three children, with whom he was not living at the time, had conceived the thought that the burdens, the sufferings, and the disappointments of life overbalance its benefits, its happiness, and its successes, and that he would be doing a kindness to his little boy by destroying the latter's life and thereby saving him from future suffering and unhappiness, and that, having given this idea careful and thorough consideration, defendant finally arrived at the determination to kill the child, and thereupon, with that intent, he did kill hint in the manner proved and admitted in this case, the defendant was just as much guilty of murder in the first degree as if his purpose was (as in fact the jury may have found it to have been) to destroy his wife and children so that their support would not thereafter be a burden upon him. This is so because the state has a deep interest and concern in the preservation of the life of each of its citizens, and (except in cases of self-defense) does not either commit or permit to any individual, no matter how kindly the motive, either the right or the privilege of destroying such a life, except in punishment for crime and in the manner prescribed by law. So strong is this concern of the state that it does not even permit a man to take his own life, but punishes him for an attempt to do so. Obviously, if he may not lawfully take his own life even for the best of reasons as they appear to him, there is infinitely more reason why he should not for like reasons be permitted to take the life of another.

Where, therefore, the fact of a "willful, deliberate, and premeditated killing" is established in each of its three essential elements, the question of motive as a feature of the prosecution becomes unimportant. It is where there is an absence or uncertainty of proof upon any one or more of these three elements that the proof or absence of proof by the state of motive becomes important, not because it is an essential element of the crime, but because it is often exceedingly helpful in determining whether or not the crime was in fact committed.

Turning now to defendant's second reason for setting aside this conviction as against the weight of the evidence, it seems, in effect, to be urged that, no motive having been proved, as defendant claims, he must be taken to have been unconscious of "the quality and nature of his act, or that it was wrong," when he deliberately shot to death his little child. I say this is in effect urged, because the actual proof of any other facts to justify the assumption is not only most unsatisfactory, but is practically nil. Apart from the usual, or at least very common, children's...