State v. Johnson
| Decision Date | 02 February 1917 |
| Docket Number | No. 19993.,19993. |
| Citation | 192 S.W. 441 |
| Parties | STATE v. JOHNSON. |
| Court | Missouri Supreme Court |
Sparrow & Page, of Kansas City, for appellant. John T. Barker, Atty. Gen., and Lee B. Ewing, Asst. Atty. Gen. (James V. Billings, of Jefferson City, of counsel), for the State.
Defendant was charged in an information filed in the circuit court of Jackson county with murder in the second degree in having shot and killed a woman named Etta Klein. Upon a trial he was found guilty, and his punishment assessed at ten years' imprisonment in the penitentiary. From this judgment he appeals.
No brief has been filed by defendant, and our information as to errors alleged to have been committed must be gleaned wholly from the record. The deceased, at the time she was killed, kept a rooming house in Kansas City. She had a sister named Belle Crawford, alias Maud Williams, who lived in another part of Kansas City. Defendant was an admirer of this sister. He was a building contractor, with a police record of vagrancy and shoplifting. The evening of the homicide Belle Crawford and a half dozen or more men and women of like character met at the house of deceased and spent the time in drinking and dancing. The defendant arrived between 9 and 10 o'clock and joined in the orgy. Belle Crawford and the defendant began quarreling with each other, and, going into an adjoining roof, began scuffling or fighting, when she called to her sister the deceased, to "come and help her kill the dirty s__ of a b__, that he was hurting her." The deceased ran into the back room and struck the defendant with her fist. One Harry Brown, who was living with the deceased, ran into the room, caught the deceased, and pushed her back into the middle room, with the others of the party. Meanwhile the fight between Belle Crawford and the defendant continued. In a short time defendant came out into the middle room with his head and face bleeding, went to where his overcoat was hanging, took a revolver out of one of his pockets, walked over to where deceased was standing, and said something to her not audible to the bystanders. The deceased stamped her foot and said, "No." At this juncture the defendant shot and killed her. The bullet perforated one of the lungs and, ranging downward, lodged in the dorsal vertebræ. She sank to the floor and expired. The defendant left the house, and was arrested in another part of the city about two hours later. This is, in the main, the testimony as detailed by the state's witnesses.
Defendant's evidence is that he had the revolver because he had been watching a building in process of construction, to prevent his tools from being stolen therefrom; that upon going to the house of the deceased he and Belle Crawford got into a quarrel, and, going into the back room, a fight ensued, in which he was knocked down and became unconscious for a time; that when he got on his feet he was in a dazed condition, and went into the middle room intending to go home; that he suffered a lapse of memory and knew nothing about his having killed the deceased; that there was no ill feeling between him and her, and that Belle Crawford never called on the deceased to help her in the fight; that he had no intention of killing the deceased.
I. The information, in conformity with numerous precedents, charges murder in the second degree. State v. Dale, 108 Mo. 205, 18 S. W. 976; State v. Reed, 117 Mo. loc. cit. 613, 23 S. W. 886; State v. Fairlamb, 121 Mo. loc. cit. 145, 25 S. W. 895; State v. Lowe, 93 Mo. 547, 5 S. W. 889. But few of the objections made by defendant to rulings on the testimony were properly preserved for our consideration, and the majority of these were trivial and without merit. On cross-examination defendant...
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