State v. Francis

• Citation: 52 S.W.2d 552,330 Mo. 1205
• Parties: The State v. Esther Francis, Appellant
• Decision Date: 29 August 1932
• Court: Missouri Supreme Court

52 S.W.2d 552

330 Mo. 1205

The State v. Esther Francis, Appellant

Supreme Court of Missouri

August 29, 1932

Appeal from the Circuit Court of City of St. Louis; Hon. John W Calhoun, Judge.

Affirmed.

Stratton Shartel, Attorney-General, for respondent; G. C Weatherby of counsel.

(1) The indictment is sufficient. Sec. 3988, R. S. 1929; State v Renfro, 279 S.W. 702; State v. Conley, 255 Mo. 185; State v. Connor, 252 S.W. 713. (2) The court correctly submitted the law of the case to the jury. State v. Harp, 306 Mo. 428; State v. Bradford, 324 Mo. 705. (3) The verdict, sentence, and judgment are supported by the evidence. State v. Ryland, 324 Mo. 714; State v. Allister, 317 Mo. 348; State v. Wooley, 215 Mo. 678. (4) Assignments one and two in the motion for new trial do not comply with the statute in such cases made and provided because too indefinite in their terms. Sec. 3735, R. S. 1929; State v. Martin, 317 Mo. 313. (5) The court did not err in admitting the testimony of the witness Floyd Washington. This testimony was competent for the purpose of connecting the defendant with the knife found at the scene of the killing and was, therefore, a circumstance tending to show that the defendant did the stabbing. State v. Sprouse, 177 S.W. 338; State v. Wilson, 223 Mo. 173. (6) The court did not err in admitting the testimony of the witness Sergeant Williams. The presumption of law is that the deceased was in the peace and dignity of the State at the time she was stabbed and consequently the presence of this presumption renders untenable defendant's contention the State had not proved that deceased was in the peace and dignity of the State before admitting witness's testimony. This allegation is surplusage. State v. Hascall, 284 Mo. 607; State v. Wilson, 237 S.W. 776. (7) The record does not reveal any prejudicial error on the part of the court in connection with the argument of the assistant circuit attorney to the jury. State v. Baublits, 324 Mo. 1210; State v. Miller, 264 Mo. 395; State v. James, 216 Mo. 394.

OPINION

Ellison, J.

The defendant, a negro woman nineteen years old, was convicted of manslaughter by a jury in the Circuit Court of the City of St. Louis, and her punishment fixed at imprisonment in the penitentiary for six years. She was allowed to appeal as a poor person. No brief in her behalf has been filed in this court, but a complete transcript of the record, including a bill of exceptions, was filed within twelve months, as required by the statute. [Sec. 3761, R. S. 1929.] The prosecution was by indictment for the unlawful, wilful and felonious killing of one Grace Stewart by making a fatal assault upon her with a knife: that is to say, the indictment charged manslaughter.

The evidence for the State was that about 12:30 A. M. on December 2, 1929, a young negro man named Otis Collier was at the intersection of Jefferson Avenue and Locust Street in St. Louis, on the way to his work as janitor of a building in that vicinity. Hearing a woman scream and call for help he stopped on the corner for a brief interval, listening, and the appellant came up to him. She had on a fur coat, a man's shirt and tie, and a cap twisted sideways on her head, and wore socks or short stockings. He had noticed her in the street and passed her a few minutes before. She asked "what was the matter, the lady was screaming." He answered that he thought a woman had got hurt. The appellant did not reply. Both walked up Locust Street about forty or fifty feet and found a white woman lying on her stomach in the snow on the sidewalk, who later proved to be Grace Stewart, the deceased.

Grace Stewart said to him in the presence of the appellant "that negro stabbed me." The appellant then said to him "I hate to see anybody suffer like that," and asked him for a nickel so she could telephone the police. He gave it to her and both went back to the corner of Olive Street and Jefferson Avenue where the witness waited. Presently two policemen came. The appellant told them a woman had been hurt and the witness, the appellant and the two officers all went to where Grace Stewart was still lying on the sidewalk. A patrol wagon came soon and took her to the hospital.

Floyd Washington, a bell boy at the Palmer Hotel testified he saw the appellant in the hotel four or five hours before the killing. She was wearing a fur coat and socks or short stockings, and appeared to be cleaning her finger nails with a knife which had a black handle and a bright new blade. The knife was introduced in evidence and identified by him. He made fun of the fur coat the appellant was wearing and she threatened to stick him with the knife. He saw the same knife again at police headquarters after midnight that night. This witness was vigorously assailed on cross-examination, and it was shown that at the coroner's inquest he had testified he saw part of the blade of the knife but didn't notice much about the handle, when the appellant threatened him with it.

Frank Williams, police sergeant, was one of the two officers who took the appellant into custody at Jefferson Avenue and Olive Street as has been narrated. She was wearing a fur coat and a gray cap. She told them a woman had been stabbed on Locust Street. They put the appellant in the police car and drove to the place where Grace Stewart had been left lying on the sidewalk. There they picked up the injured woman. She said she had been stabbed by "a colored person." The officers turned the appellant over to some uniformed officers and took Mrs. Stewart to the City Hospital. She was conscious but reticent and weak and wouldn't tell her name. She said she had been stabbed by a negro and if they would go back they would find the knife she had been stabbed with. That was all she would tell. She was bleeding from a wound in the chest. After leaving the woman at the hospital the officers returned and found a knife in a vacant lot on Locust Street within five or six feet of where she had been lying. It was the knife previously identified by the witness Floyd Washington as having been in the appellant's possession earlier that night. At the police station the appellant denied stabbing Mrs. Stewart. The next night -- twenty-four hours later -- after the witnesses Collier and Washington had been to the police station, the appellant made a written admission of her guilt. The statement was introduced in evidence over the objections of the appellant, which will be noticed later.

Lieutenant Moran, in charge of the Eighth District police station in St. Louis, said when the appellant first was brought to the station she denied stabbing the deceased and stated she came upon her, already wounded, on her road home, and went to her assistance. She also denied ownership of the knife and said she had never seen it before. This officer talked to appellant several times and a day or two later, after the inquest, she made a voluntary confession and read, corrected and signed it.

The confession admitted she had been at the Palmer Hotel until about 12:30 the night of the killing; that the bell boy Floyd Washington had made some remark about her fur coat, as he testified, and she had playfully threatened to cut him with a knife she had in her pocket, it being a three bladed knife with a black bone handle, and the same one found by Sergeant Williams on Locust Street. The statement went on to narrate that she left the hotel about 12:45 A. M. for her home. As she was proceeding along Locust Street she met a strange woman who was staggering and acting crazy. The woman seized her by the coat collar and she thereupon stabbed her with the knife. The confession accounted for her movements thereafter until she met the witness Collier and substantially corroborated his testimony and that of Sergeant Williams. She said after the stabbing she ran through a "gangway" to an alley, thence through the alley to Jefferson Avenue, and then back north to the Locust Street intersection where she met Collier.

The coroner's physician testified an autopsy performed on the body of Grace Stewart disclosed her death was caused by a single penetrating stab wound which passed clear through the sternum, or breast bone, and entered the heart. The organs of the body generally were found to be normal and the stomach contents disclosed no trace of alcohol. The deceased was about forty years old, five feet six inches tall, weight about 150 pounds, and had on her person a ring, a string of beads and $ 5 in money.

The appellant was nineteen years old, about five feet eleven inches tall, and weighed 145 pounds. She testified at the trial and repeated substantially what she had stated in her confession. She didn't know and had never seen Grace Stewart before the assault; but met her on the way home that night when the Stewart woman, without saying a word, suddenly grabbed her by the coat collar and held on, though appellant had done nothing and begged to be released. Appellant thereupon attempted to push Mrs. Stewart away, using the hand in which she held the knife, and cut her without knowing she had done it. On cross-examination the appellant admitted she got the knife out of her pocket and opened it after the Stewart woman seized her, and the blade was hard to open.

Continuing appellant testified the deceased released her hold after being stabbed, and that she dropped the knife and ran "just as the statement said," but returned to see whether the woman had been hurt. On her return she met the witness Collier, borrowed five cents, and was going to telephone the police when she met the two officers who took her back to where Grace Stewart lay on the sidewalk. She admitted ownership of the knife and that she had it in her pocket that night when she met the bell boy ...