State v. Goldman
| Decision Date | 05 March 1926 |
| Docket Number | No. 25029.,25029. |
| Citation | 166 Minn. 292,207 N.W. 627 |
| Parties | STATE v. GOLDMAN. |
| Court | Minnesota Supreme Court |
Appeal from District Court, Hennepin County; Joseph W. Molyneaux, Judge.
Daniel Louis Goldman was convicted of arson in the second degree, and he appeals. Affirmed.
Donald Hughes, Neil Hughes, and P. A. Cosgrove, all of Minneapolis, for appellant.
C. L. Hilton, Atty. Gen., and F. B. Olson, Co. Atty., of Minneapolis, for the State.
The defendant was convicted of arson in the second degree and appeals. There are two questions:
(1) Whether the evidence sustains a finding of the commission of the crime of arson.
(2) Whether it sustains the finding that the defendant committed the crime.
1. On the night of January 27, 1925, about 11 o'clock, a house at No. 815 Sheridan avenue, Minneapolis, where the defendant had lived for a few months, was burned from the inside. The doors were locked. The firemen unlocked the front door with a skeleton key. A chair was blocked against it, hinged under the doorknob. There were two or more centers of fire. There were so-called "leads" from one to another. Pieces of celluloid were scattered about. There was an odor of kerosene. There was no fire in the furnace. The electric wiring was examined and nothing wrong with it was found. The evidence sustains a finding that the fire was of incendiary origin.
2. The evidence connecting the defendant with the setting of the fire is wholly circumstantial; and its sufficiency is the only substantial question.
On the morning of January 26, 1925, the defendant went to Rochester, where his wife was at the clinic, and in the evening of January 27 returned with her and their child, arriving at the depot at about 8 o'clock. He carried a suit case. There is evidence that about that time a taxi driver picked up a man and a woman and a child at the depot, the man carrying a suit case, and was directed by the man to drive to 817 Sheridan avenue. There was no such number. The taxi driver drove them to No. 815, where the man told him to stop, and the three got out. A day or two later the taxi driver identified No. 815 as the place to which he drove his passengers. He does not identify the defendant.
At about 9:30 the same evening a man, woman and child, the man carrying a suit case, boarded a street car at the end of the Sixth Avenue North line, three blocks from the defendant's home. This was the place where the defendant would take a car in going toward the city. The conductor does not identify the defendant, nor know where he got off. His only identification is that of a man, woman and child, the man carrying a suit case. They came from the direction of the defendant's home. The car in going toward the city crossed Elwood avenue.
The defendant claims that he took a street car from the depot, transferred at Fifth and Hennepin to the Sixth Avenue North car for north Minneapolis, going towards his home; that on the way his wife was taken sick; that they got off at Elwood avenue, about 8:30; and that they walked a short distance to the house of a friend on Humboldt avenue where they spent the night. The car line which he took at the transfer point...
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