State v. Martin

• Decision Date: 14 September 1953
• Docket Number: No. 43226,43226
• Citation: 364 Mo. 258,260 S.W.2d 536
• Parties: STATE v. MARTIN.
• Court: Missouri Supreme Court

Page 536

260 S.W.2d 536

364 Mo. 258

STATE v. MARTIN.

No. 43226.

Supreme Court of Missouri, en Banc.

Sept. 14, 1953.

Roscoe C. Patterson, Kirby W. Patterson, Springfield, for appellant. J. E. Taylor, Atty. Gen., Jack Fleischaker, Asst. Atty. Gen., for respondent.

LEEDY, Presiding Judge.

An exhaustive opinion prepared by Coil, C., in Division I on submission of this case in that division, correctly determines the issues on this appeal, and we adopt it as our own, as set forth below (quotation marks omitted):

Defendant was convicted of second degree murder and appealed from a judgment sentencing her to ten years in the penitentiary. She contends that the trial court erred in giving and refusing instructions.

Defendant, Mary Martin, and deceased, Catherine Brown, engaged in a quarrel and fight which resulted in the death of Catherine from a knife wound which penetrated her heart. Defendant and deceased were on unfriendly terms, evidenced by a series of incidents which sprung from the relations over a period of years between deceased and defendant's husband. On the fatal Sunday, there were two baseball games between teams from Joplin and Springfield, one at the high school stadium and a subsequent one at Silver Springs Park. Defendant and deceased attended both. They had an altercation at the first. Later, at the second game, defendant and some other persons were standing at the driver's side of the McAdams automobile which was inside the ball park and behind the grandstand. Deceased stood at or entered the opposite side of the McAdams car. Accounts vary as to subsequent events. There was substantial evidence, however, that defendant went to deceased and held a knife against her throat; that a fight ensued during the course of which defendant stabbed deceased with the knife which she admittedly held in her hand; and that deceased's death was caused by a penetrating knife wound into the heart inflicted by defendant.

Defendant's testimony as to the events immediately preceding and during the course of the fight was that while she stood at the driver's side talking with Mrs. McAdams, Catherine, the deceased, entered the front seat from the opposite side; that Catherine made a remark importing that defendant's husband was the father of Catherine's child; that when the remark was repeated, defendant said, 'Catherine, will you please leave me alone'; that when Catherine again repeated the remark defendant walked around the car to talk with deceased; that when she arrived at the front door Catherine hit her on the head, defendant struck back and at the same time pushed Catherine back into the front seat; that Catherine reached for something, whereupon defendant removed a knife from her (defendant's) pocketbook; that they began fighting, pulling hair, shoving, and hitting; that some men, including defendant's husband, separated them; that she (defendant) did not have any intention of killing or injuring Catherine and never did know that she struck Catherine with the knife. Some eyewitnesses of the fight said they didn't know Catherine had been struck with a knife. Defendant remained at the ball game with her husband and some time later returned home where she was informed of the death of Catherine and was arrested.

The trial court instructed on murder in the second degree, manslaughter, and selfdefense. No complaint is made of these main instructions. Instruction 3 was given at the request of the state: 'The Court instructs the jury that the law presumes that every person intends the natural and probable consequences of his own voluntary acts. And if he uses upon another a deadly weapon at a vital part of the body, he is presumed to intend death or great bodily harm to the person against whom such weapon is used.'

Defendant attacks this instruction for the reason, among others, that it predicates a presumption of intent to kill or do great bodily harm upon the mere 'use' as opposed to 'intentional use' of a deadly weapon. If this construction of the language used is correct, then indeed the instruction is, for that reason alone, erroneous. For whatever else may be said about instructions concerning presumptions of intent, it is at once obvious that the 'presumption' stated does not arise except it be predicated upon an intentional act. The question in this respect is whether the jury could reasonably understand from both sentences of the instruction that any other than a voluntary or intentional use of a deadly weapon was encompassed. The view we take makes it unnecessary to determine that question.

We shall, for further discussion, consider instruction 3 as though the word 'intentionally' preceded the word 'uses', so that for our purposes the second sentence of the instruction begins: 'And if he intentionally uses upon another', etc. We shall further assume for the present that some instruction on this subject was proper.

It may be that as an abstract, general proposition instruction 3 correctly states the law. There is a universally recognized rule of law that, at least in the absence of evidence to the contrary, a sane man is presumed to intend the natural and probable consequences of his intentional acts. And it follows that this rule in general application results in the conclusion that, in the absence of evidence to the contrary, one who intentionally with a deadly weapon stabs another in the heart is presumed to intend to kill or do great bodily harm. But a review of the cases in this state on this question justifies the assertion that we have not treated this presumption as a conclusive one in the sense that it is a rule of substantive law which applies regardless of facts and which cannot be contradicted by evidence to the contrary. At least this is true as to instructions on the subject which deal with both intent to kill and malice. In cases in which instructions have been approved, the rule (as to one intending the natural or probable result of his intentional acts) has been stated with a limiting phrase, such as 'in the absence of qualifying facts' or 'in the absence of evidence to the contrary'. And the abstract proposition stated in such instructions has been more often than not specifically applied to the facts of a particular case. Illustrative of such an approved instruction is one in State v. Hudspeth, 159 Mo. 178, 195, 196, 60 S.W. 136, 140: 'The court further instructs the jury that he who willfully (that is, intentionally) uses upon another, at some vital part, a deadly weapon, as a loaded shotgun, must, in the absence of qualifying facts, be presumed to know that the effect is likely to be death, and, knowing this, must be presumed to intend the death which is the probable and ordinary consequence of such an act; and, if such deadly weapon is used without just cause or provocation, he must be presumed to do it wickedly or from a bad heart. If, therefore, the jury believe from the evidence that the defendant took the life of Josiah W. Kessner by shooting him in a vital part with a shotgun loaded with gunpowder and leaden balls, with a manifest design to use such weapon upon him, and with sufficient time to deliberate and fully form the conscious purpose to kill, and without sufficient reason or cause or provocation, then such killing is murder in the first degree; and while it devolves upon the state to prove the willfullness, deliberation, premeditation, and malice aforethought, all of which are necessary to constitute murder in the first degree, yet these need not be proven by direct evidence, but may be deduced from all the facts and circumstances attending the killing, and, if the jury can satisfactorily and reasonably infer their existence from all the evidence, they will be warranted in finding the defendant guilty of murder in the first degree.'

Instructions in somewhat similar form, containing words of limitation which point up the nonconclusive nature of the 'presumption', have been approved, against attacks on various grounds, in many cases. Among them: State v. Dollarhide, 333 Mo. 1087, 1089, 63 S.W.2d 998, 999; State v. Hart, 309 Mo. 77, 84, 274 S.W. 385, 386; State v. Caldwell, Mo.Sup., 231 S.W. 613, 615; State v. Little, Mo.Sup., 228 S.W. 793, 797; State v. Allen, 290 Mo. 258, 274, 234 S.W. 837, 841; State v. Wansong, 271 Mo. 50, 56, 195 S.W. 999, 1001; State v. Keener, 225 Mo. 488, 495, 125 S.W. 747, 749; State v. McCarver, 194 Mo. 717, 728, 742, 92 S.W. 684, 686, 691; State v. Grant, 152 Mo. 57, 64, 69, 53 S.W. 432, 433, 434; State v. Reed, 117 Mo. 604, 612, 23 S.W. 886, 888; State v. Landgraf, 95 Mo. 97, 104, 8 S.W. 237, 240.

We are cognizant of the fact that upon close analysis instant instruction 3 does not in so many words deal with 'felonious intent' and makes no reference to any presumption of malice. Actually, the only 'presumptions' specifically stated are the 'intent to kill' and the 'intent to do great bodily harm'. Now it is true that to sustain a conviction for murder there must be an intent to kill, both in the sense that the act must have been willful (i. e., intentional, not accidental), and in the sense that an intent to kill forms a part of 'felonious intent' or a 'criminal intent'. But it is not the killing alone which the law condemns as a crime; it is the particular manner in which the killing is done. Thus, any instruction which speaks of a presumption that one intended to kill or do great bodily harm would be understood as meaning that one intended to kill feloniously. In other words, when an instruction says one 'is presumed to intend death', the meaning must be that that one is presumed to intend death by a mode which is against the admonition of the law.

We are of the opinion, therefore, that instruction 3 is erroneous. Its effect is to inform the jury that the law conclusively presumes (not subject to being contradicted) that one who intentionally uses a deadly weapon at a vital part of the body of another intended to kill such other...