State v. Helton, 2623
| Decision Date | 16 November 1954 |
| Docket Number | No. 2623,2623 |
| Citation | 276 P.2d 434,73 Wyo. 92 |
| Parties | STATE of Wyoming, Plaintiff and Respondent, v. Ann HELTON, Defendant and Appellant. |
| Court | Wyoming Supreme Court |
William J. Wehrli and Marvin L. Bishop, Casper, for appellant.
Howard B. Black, Atty. Gen., Paul T. Liamos, Jr., Deputy Atty. Gen., James L. Hettinger, Robert A. McKay, Asst. Attys. Gen., Raymond B. Whitaker, County and Pros. Atty., Natrona County, Casper, for respondent.
Sometime near the hour of six o'clock A.M. on the morning of October 15, 1952, the defendant shot and killed her husband in the kitchen of their home, firing five shots from a .38 calibre Smith & Wesson revolver. Three of these shots struck the deceased--one bullet barely grazing his neck under the chin, one bullet passing through the body, and one bullet passing through the head. Being charged with murder in the first degree, she was convicted by a jury of murder in the second degree. Judgment was entered accordingly and the defendant was sentenced to the penitentiary for a minimum term of twenty years and a maximum term of twenty-five years. It is from such judgment and sentence that the defendant has appealed to this court.
Other than the defendant, there were living no eyewitnesses to the shooting but, to establish its charge, the state introduced in evidence several photographs of the scene where the shooting occurred, the transcript of testimony given by the defendant before her arrest at the coroner's inquest, called and examined thirty-two witnesses, and offered a large number of exhibits--thirty-eight of which were received in evidence.
The defendant called and examined eleven witnesses and had two exhibits received.
From this mass of evidence we shall give such summary as we think will adequately reflect the state's material evidence, and which we feel is necessary for an understanding of our conclusions.
From the state's evidence it appears that about 7:10 o'clock on the morning of October 15, 1952, the office of the sheriff of Natrona county, Wyoming, received a telephone call indicating an emergency at the home of the defendant. The city police of Casper were notified immediately and two patrolmen responded. At the house they found two brothers of the defendant, the wives of these brothers, a physician, and the defendant. Lying on his back on the kitchen floor with the head to the south and the feet to the north was the dead body of a man, clothed only in short-sleeved, long legged underwear, Levi trousers, high-topped shoes and stockings. A .38 calibre Smith & Wesson revolver was beside the body. One patrolman testified he observed powder burns on the underwear over the abdomen of the deceased.
The kitchen was a room about eighteen feet in length from north to south and twelve feet in width from east to west. A door opened at its south end from the living room. In the northeast corner, another door, the upper half of which was glass, opened outward onto a landing with steps going downstairs to the basement and to an outside back door. Entering the kitchen from the living room, on the left or along the west side of the room, there was a counter three feet high and eleven feet long, with cupboards below. At the end of this counter, there was a partial partition beyond which was a breakfast nook of about seven feet. This nook contained a small breakfast table and chairs, as well as another small table some twenty inches wide and was placed against the north wall of the room. Almost in the center of the north wall was an electric refrigerator. On the right or east side as you entered from the living room, there was a gas range, a kitchen sink element with cupboard and drawers below. This element extended from the range to a point a little more than halfway the length of the room. Immediately north of this sink element was a broom closet about three feet long and a foot and one-half deep, and there was a window beyond this in the east wall in the extreme northeast corner. About a foot north from this broom closet was a floor register some 1'4"' X 1'2"' in size. Photographic evidence showed the body of the deceased lying with the head slightly north and west of the room's center, with the feet extending northeasterly toward the refrigerator. The counter on the west side was one foot ten inches deep. The breakfast table stood out from the west wall about three feet ten inches. The sink element on the east side extended out from the wall about two feet two inches. Except where the breakfast table was placed, this left a clear space in the central portion of the room of about seven and three-quarters feet, and a space between the breakfast table and the broom closet of about six and one-half feet.
Testimony as well as photographic evidence showed a large pool of blood on the floor extending from the right side of the head of the deceased toward the east, and a smaller pool of blood on the floor at the left of the head. There were also blood spatters on the floor extending from the body to the northeast corner of the room, with the greatest amount near the floor register. There was a wastebasket north of the broom closet, sitting partly over the floor register, and just above it there was a towel rack attached to the closet. Lying over a portion of the top of this basket was a khaki shirt, which the testimony showed may have been hung from the towel rack at the time of the shooting. There were blood drops and splotches of blood on material inside the wastebasket, both beneath the shirt and to the side of the shirt, as well as on top of the shirt. There were also blood spots on the cloth covering wrapped around a rifle which was standing in the corner made by the east wall and the broom closet. There is some testimony that a single drop of blood was found on the second step of the stairs leading down to the basement, although other witnesses did not see it. It is also unclear whether or not the door at the north end was found open or closed when the officers arrived. There was a note on the breakfast table written and signed by the defendant, saying----
'Dear Dale
I cannot stand to live any longer. You have can every thing I own
Ann'
Five exploded shells and one unexploded shell were found in the revolver. One bullet was found and was left imbedded in the ceiling of the stairway hall where it had lodged after passing in an obviously upward and somewhat northwesterly direction through the glass panel of the upper portion of the door leading to the basement. A second bullet was found lying loose on the kitchen floor near the floor register in the northeast corner of the room. A third bullet was found lying loose upon the kitchen floor beneath the breakfast table and near the corner of the breakfast nook made by the junction of the partial partition at the north end of the counter with the west wall of the kitchen. At a height of three feet nine and three-quarters inches from the floor was a mark, referred to in the testimony as a 'ricochet mark', of a bullet on the breakfast nook side of the wall of the partial partition, and at a height of three feet eight inches from the floor was another similar ricochet mark on the west wall of the breakfast nook. The testimony seems to assume that these ricochet marks were both made by the bullet found under the edge of the kitchen table. A fourth bullet was inside the extreme south end of the counter cabinet on the west wall near the floor, where it remained after having struck the kitchen floor at a point about three feet north of the living room doorway and approximately two feet east of the counter on the west side of the room, and then ricocheted into and through the front of the cabinet where it was found. The fifth bullet had passed through the counter cabinet at a point near the floor and approximately midway the length of the room, after it had also ricocheted from the floor at a point slightly beyond and to the left of where the head of the deceased lay, and was found inside the cabinet. A very small chip of lead from a bullet was also found on the floor near the head of the deceased, as was a portion of one of his teeth.
Expert medical testimony of the pathologist who performed an autopsy of the body of the deceased, indicated the wound on the neck under the chin was superficial and barely grazed the left side of the neck, passing from left to right, and was inflicted fifteen to twenty seconds before death or after death.
The wound through the body was described as passing almost through the center of the victim's body and at a point some sixteen centimeters above the umbilicus. The pathologist said this wound was caused by a missile entering the back and emerging from the front of the abdomen, after having penetrated the base of the left tenth rib, the medial edge of the left lower lobe of the lung, the aorta, the right ventricle of the heart, and soft tissues. The wound was of such character as would have caused death within a minimum of ten seconds to a maximum of less than one minute, probably around forty-five seconds--and there was no external bleeding from the wound. At the preliminary examination this expert had testified he had found a grayish discoloration of about three inches in area around the wound on the deceased's abdomen, and that this discoloration was typical of powder burn, and that it was a powder burn.
The wound through the head was described as entering the left cheek near the left corner of the mouth, passing rightward and backward, breaking off the second molar tooth, entering the roof of the mouth on the right side, passing through the bone of the palate, and rupturing a major branch or possibly several branches of the right carotid artery. This wound bled somewhat profusely--both internally and externally--and although it was a fatal wound, the deceased would have lived longer after its infliction than after the infliction of the body wound,...
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