State v. Jones
| Decision Date | 05 April 1889 |
| Parties | THE STATE OF KANSAS v. JOHN W. JONES |
| Court | Kansas Supreme Court |
Appeal from Shawnee District Court.
PROSECUTION for murder in the first degree. From a conviction at the November term, 1885, the defendant Jones appeals. The facts are sufficiently stated in the opinion.
Case reversed and remanded.
Vance & Campbell, for appellant.
S. B Bradford, attorney general, and Charles Curtis, county attorney, for The State.
OPINION
On Sunday morning, September 20, 1885, John W. Jones, the defendant, killed Edward H. White, in Shawnee county. The defendant was tried in November following, in the district court of said county, found guilty by a jury of murder in the first degree, and upon March 31, 1886, the court entered judgment accordingly. Defendant appeals.
The record discloses substantially these facts: Jones was a tenant of White, and there had been some difficulty between them concerning the terms of a lease under which he held, and more especially about the trespassing of White's stock in Jones's garden-patch and cornfield. There had been considerable bad blood, some threats made by both parties and several altercations between them. Early in the morning in question White missed a heifer from his herd, and went to Jones's house, which was about fifty or sixty rods south of his house, where he found her. Of what occurred after White first met Jones that morning, we have the testimony of the defendant and of Edward White, a ten-year-old son of the deceased. Jones says he was near his stable feeding his horses, and as White passed by after his heifer, he abused him; claimed he was responsible for the heifer getting into the cornfield by not keeping his fences properly repaired, and threatened him; that he said little, if anything, in reply. On the other hand, White's boy states that Jones first called to his father, but that they were so far away from him that he could not understand what was said between them. Both agree that White passed on, found his heifer, and was driving her back to his house. The lad says that the heifer ran out of the road and his father followed her; while Jones states that after driving the heifer past his place he must have turned around and come back to the stable. The testimony in the district court was evidently given with reference to a plat before the court; that plat is not here, nor a copy of it, but from the record it seems that Jones's stable, near where this man was shot, was four or five rods from his house in a northeast direction, and that the hen-coop hereafter mentioned was south of the house and southwest of the stable. After this talk between White and Jones, while White was hunting after his heifer, Jones went to his house and got his musket, brought it to the stable, and set it outside of the door. Concerning the immediate act of killing, young White states that as his father was following the heifer, Jones ran out and got upon the hen-house, and shot from the roof at his father, who was some distance away. From the testimony of the boy, it appears that the parties must have been at least sixty feet apart, and may have been one hundred. He states that after the defendant had shot, he jumped down off of the hen-house and ran and struck his father two blows with the butt of his musket, after he had fallen. The defendant on the other hand, testifies that he was at work at the stable, and White having driven his heifer past Jones's house toward his own, turned and came back to him at the stable, and the first he knew of his presence was a threat from White; that he immediately stepped around the corner of the stable and got his gun; that White threatened to kill him, and was coming toward him with his hand in his coat pocket, and while he was advancing, and within seven or eight feet of him, he shot him, and, grasping his musket by the barrel, struck him before he fell. The gun-shot wound was in the left side, near the hip bone, and entered his body within a space of two inches, with three or four scattering shots around the edge of the hole; the shot used were double B's. White never spoke after he was hit, and died almost instantly. Some of the threads of the coat of deceased were driven into the wound, and there was some testimony, though not very satisfactory, tending to show that the garments of White were powder-burnt.
At the trial Joel Huntoon, a civil engineer, testified that the defendant upon the day of the homicide fired a musket from the hen-house to a paper target placed where the deceased was shot; this was produced in court and introduced in evidence, but after all the evidence was in, the court excluded it from the jury. The witness testified that the musket used was similar to the one with which defendant shot deceased; it may have been the same one.
The defendant then offered ...
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