State v. Fielding

• Decision Date: 03 July 1907
• Parties: STATE OF IOWA v. MARSHALL FIELDING, Appellant
• Court: Iowa Supreme Court

112 N.W. 539

135 Iowa 255

STATE OF IOWA v. MARSHALL FIELDING, Appellant

Supreme Court of Iowa, Des Moines

July 3, 1907

Appeal from Mahaska District Court.-- HON.W. G. CLEMENTS, Judge.

ON an indictment for murder in the first degree, defendant was convicted of manslaughter, and sentenced to imprisonment in the penitentiary for eight years, from which sentence he appeals.-- Affirmed.

Affirmed.

Woodson & Brown, for appellant.

Chas W. Mullan, Attorney-General, Charles W. Lyon, Assistant Attorney-General, and John N. McCoy, County Attorney, for the State.

OPINION

MCCLAIN, J.

I.

The assignment of error on the overruling by the trial court of defendant's challenge to a juror on the ground that he had formed and expressed an opinion as to the guilt of defendant is not well taken. The record shows that at the conclusion of his examination by the court he unqualifiedly affirmed his ability to discard any belief of defendant's guilt based on conversations with reference to the matter, and the court, in the exercise of a sound discretion, was justified in reaching the conclusion that the objection to him was unfounded. State v. Crofford 121 Iowa 395, 96 N.W. 889.

The complaint that another juror, after being accepted, was excused by the court at his own request, on account of sickness in his family, is also without merit. In excusing this juror the court gave the defendant the right to exercise an additional peremptory challenge, if his counsel saw proper to do so, and there could have been no prejudice resulting from the ruling.

But without regard to the abstract question of the correctness of these two rulings of the court, defendant cannot complain for it does not appear that he had exhausted his peremptory challenges, or that any juror to whom objection was made and who could not have been removed by peremptory challenge was allowed to sit. State v. Wright, 112 Iowa 436, 84 N.W. 541.

II. The person whom defendant was charged with killing was his wife, and complaint is made of the introduction of testimony as to difficulties between them three days before the killing, in which defendant struck his wife, and by his declarations indicated ill will toward her. This testimony as to prior difficulties was admissible to show the relations of the parties to each other. 1 McClain's Criminal Law, section 417.

III. Statements of deceased with reference to the circumstances attending the injury inflicted upon her by her husband which caused her death were proven over defendant's objection. The complaint with reference to the rulings permitting the introduction of this evidence are not well founded. The record sufficiently shows the belief of the injured woman at the time these declarations were made that she was about to die to justify their consideration by the jury; and, while it is contended that the statement of the wife, in this connection, that defendant deliberately shot her, involved a mere conclusion, the contention is without merit. These...