State v. Grba
| Decision Date | 22 June 1923 |
| Docket Number | No. 35120.,35120. |
| Citation | 196 Iowa 241,194 N.W. 250 |
| Parties | STATE v. GRBA. |
| Court | Iowa Supreme Court |
OPINION TEXT STARTS HERE
Appeal from District Court, Cerro Gordo County; C. H. Kelley, Judge.
The defendant was indicted for the crime of murder in the first degree and entered a plea of not guilty, and upon trial was convicted and sentenced to life imprisonment. Reversed.
De Graff, J., dissenting.J. E. Williams and Duncan Rule, both of Mason City, for appellant.
Ben J. Gibson, Atty. Gen., Maxwell A. O'Brien, Asst. Atty. Gen., and L. R. Boomhower, Ralph Stanberry, and John A. Senneff, all of Mason City, for the State.
Mike Baldizer was a taxi driver living in a suburb of Mason City. He was a native of Austria-Hungary, and had been in this country about ten years. His wife was of the same nationality, and she and Baldizer were acquainted while in Europe. She came to this country about three months after her husband, and they were married here. The Baldizer home was located about a quarter of a mile west of the main plant of the Lehigh Portland Cement Company. It was one of a group of cottages which are referred to as the “Lehigh cottages.” The Baldizer cottage was located on the south side of a street that runs east and west. This street terminates about 100 feet west of the Baldizer cottage, and at the end of the street is located a garage used by Baldizer. This garage has double doors opening into the street on the east side, and near the northwest corner of the garage is a small door opening to the north. There is a small ditch with a platform across it opposite this door to the north of the garage. About a half mile southwest from the garage are located the clay pits where the appellant was employed. There is a line of railway track running from the clay pits in a general northeasterly direction until it reaches a point some distance north and west of the Baldizer house, where its direction turns nearly to the east. West of the garage is a line of trees that extends some distance north and south of the garage. About 1 o'clock in the morning of August 21, 1920, Baldizer returned home from having made a drive with his car. He evidently drove the car into the garage through the double doors on the east side and then went out of the single door on the north side. When he stepped upon the platform in front of this door an explosion occurred which severely injured him and from the effect of which he died on August 24th. Doctors and the police were summoned immediately, and after the police arrived they discovered that dynamite had been placed under the platform referred to and that there were wires stretching from this place in a northwesterly direction a distance of about 60 feet. The police arranged to have automobiles turn their lights on these wires and prevented any interference with the same until about 2 o'clock in the afternoon following the explosion, when a party arrived from Waterloo with two bloodhounds which were taken to the end of the wires, where it appeared that the weeds in the lot had been broken down as though some person had lain. At this place the bloodhounds were started, and they first followed a course around the cottages and around the garage and seemed to go in a circle. They were again taken to the place at the end of the wires and this time proceeded to the clay pits. At the pits they went to the steam shovel where some of the appellant's clothing had been left. The appellant having been arrested in the meantime, and being lodged in jail, the dogs were taken there and appellant and a number of other men were brought into the room where the dogs were, and when the dogs were released they went to the appellant and one of them put his paw upon the appellant and laid down at his feet. The actions of the dogs will be discussed at greater length under a separate division of this opinion.
A few days before the tragedy the appellant inquired of a witness if the latter could get him some fuse wire and caps. He said he wanted them for his brother-in-law at Charles City, who was going to blow up a rock. The witness testified that the appellant stated at the time,
Another witness testified that on the morning of the 19th of August the appellant had inquired of the witness if the latter could get the appellant some electric dynamite caps, and appellant explained to this witness that his brother-in-law wanted them to shoot a rock at Charles City; that on the afternoon of the same day the appellant came to the place where the witness was employed and asked if the latter had got the caps; that on the morning of the 20th the witness met the appellant, who informed him that “he needn't bother; that he had got them.”
Another witness testified that on Monday of the week in which Baldizer was killed he sold the appellant a pound of blasting powder; that he returned the same day, or the next day, and informed the witness that the blasting powder did not work and that at that time the witness sold him three electric caps.
On Wednesday, August 18th, appellant purchased three or four sticks of dynamite and the blasting caps and fuses that went with it and stated he wanted the dynamite to blow up some stumps or rocks.
There was evidence that two or three days before the tragedy the appellant purchased 60 feet of insulated wire and that at the time of the purchase appellant told the party from whom he bought it that he wished to light a dredge from a Ford.
There was evidence tending to show that a party resembling the appellant purchased a dry cell battery at a store in Mason City about August 18th and also another dry cell battery was sold to a man resembling the appellant by another store during that week. The appellant is not positively identified as having been the purchaser of either of these dry cell batteries.
On Thursday preceding the Saturday upon which the tragedy occurred, about 4 o'clock in the afternoon, appellant was seen near the clay fields where he worked, with a small package under each arm. These packages were wrapped in newspaper. Two or three days before the tragedy an explosion was head in the clay pits between 8 and 9 o'clock in the evening. No blasting was regularly done in this field. The appellant contended that he bought the dynamite, wire, and caps for the purpose of killing fish in the pond in the clay field.
The party referred to as appellant's brother-in-law denied that he had asked appellant to procure any dynamite for him.
The appellant was examined by the county attorney, in the presence of the court reporter, before the trial. There was a conflict between some of the statements made by appellant at said time and his testimony upon the trial. The particular items of evidence in this regard it is unnecessary for us to set out.
The appellant is a Serbian, 24 years of age, and unmarried. He came to the United States in 1909, and to Mason City in September, 1909. For some time after he arrived in Mason City he roomed in one of the Lehigh cottages, almost directly across the street from the Baldizer cottage, and while living there, about a year before the tragedy, he became acquainted with Baldizer and his wife, who was a woman about 30 years of age. Appellant and Baldizer's wife became intimate during the time he was living at this cottage. The wife testified that on several different occasions the appellant asked her to leave and go away with him. In the summer of 1920 the appellant went to Chicago and remained for some time, and the woman testified that after his return he told her he returned because he could not stay away from her. She also testified that after the appellant returned from Chicago, in the late summer of 1920, they were together at various times, and that appellant had sexual intercourse with her at her home at a time when the husband was downtown. In the fore part of August, 1920, the woman went to Charles City to visit people named Wezmar, who formerly lived across the street from her home, and with whom the appellant had at one time roomed. The appellant went to Charles City the same day, on a later train, and slept with Mrs. Baldizer at the Wezmar home that night and had sexual intercourse with her then. They returned to Mason City together the next day. Mrs. Baldizer testified that a few days after the trip to Charles City she met the appellant in Mason City, and they went riding together in a car which she was driving, and that at the time the appellant repeatedly said to her, “Tell me the word,” and that they talked quite a long time and he finally said: “Well, Anna, if you don't listen to me, you won't go farther with me; you feel sorry about it; you shed tears; you cry plenty.”
Shortly after the injury to Baldizer the appellant came to the Baldizer home with a jug and an unlighted lantern and said to a party there at the time that he had been sleeping and came down to get some water and saw an automobile stopping there and came in the house.
The appellant started work in the clay pits, as night fireman, on or about August 10th, and worked from 6 at night until 6 in the morning. For some time prior to the tragedy he had roomed and boarded on North Washington street in Mason City, and in going to and from his work he passed the Baldizer cottage and stopped there frequently and often secured a drink of whisky from Mrs. Baldizer. On the evening of the tragedy he was seen to go past the Baldizer house on the way to his work and to fill the jug with water at that time.
The evidence in the case is quite voluminous. We have only attempted to outline a brief portion of the same, sufficient for a consideration of the questions involved in this appeal.
[1][2] I. The appellant challenges the sufficiency of the evidence to sustain the verdict of the jury. We have not set out nearly all the evidence, but only enough to indicate that it was sufficient to carry the case to the jury. The rule is so well...
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