State v. Hamil

• Decision Date: 13 December 1895
• Citation: State v. Hamil, 96 Iowa 728, 65 N.W. 395 (Iowa 1895)
• Parties: STATE v. HAMIL.
• Court: Iowa Supreme Court

96 Iowa 728

65 N.W. 395

STATE

v.HAMIL.

Supreme Court of Iowa.

Dec. 13, 1895.

Appeal from district court, Polk county; S. F. Balliet, Judge.

The defendant was indicted, tried, and convicted of the crime of murder in the first degree, and he appeals. Affirmed.E. B. Evans, for appellant.

Milton Remley, Atty. Gen., Jesse A. Miller, and J. J. Davis, for the State.

ROTHROCK, J.

The defendant was jointly indicted with George Weems for the murder of L. B. Ridpath. They were separately tried, at the same term of court. Weems was tried and convicted first, and the trial of Hamil occurred immediately afterwards. Weems appealed, and the judgment and sentence against him were affirmed at the present term of this court. State v. Weems, 65 N. W. 387. Nearly all of the questions in this appeal are disposed of in the opinion in the appeal of Weems. The two cases have been considered together, and it will be necessary only to dispose of such questions in this case as did not arise in the other.

After the joint application for a change of venue was overruled, Hamil renewed the motion, and filed some additional affidavits. The motion was again overruled. Another motion for a change of venue was made, pending the impaneling of the jury. There were no additional affidavits filed in support of this last motion. The defendant also filed an affidavit that the judge before whom the case was tried was prejudiced against him. We have examined all these proceedings, and they appear to us to present no stronger showing than that made on the joint application for a change, the overruling of which we have sustained in the other appeal. They show that the newspapers of the city, in reporting the Weems trial then in progress, published articles condemning the murder and the murderers in...