State v. Moore

• Citation: 80 Kan. 232,102 P. 475
• Decision Date: 08 May 1909
• Docket Number: 16,275
• Parties: THE STATE OF KANSAS v. JOHN C. MOORE
• Court: United States State Supreme Court of Kansas

102 P. 475

80 Kan. 232

THE STATE OF KANSAS v. JOHN C. MOORE

No. 16,275

Supreme Court of Kansas

May 8, 1909

Decided January, 1909.

Appeal from Cowley district court; CARROLL L. SWARTS, judge.

Judgment affirmed.

SYLLABUS

SYLLABUS BY THE COURT.

1. EVIDENCE--Physical Objects. Generally physical objects which constitute a portion of a transaction or which serve to unfold or explain it may be exhibited in evidence whenever the transaction is under judicial investigation.

2. MURDER--Garments Worn by Deceased--Evidence. Appellant was tried for murder in the first degree for shooting his wife with fatal effect. The jacket she wore at the time she was shot was introduced in evidence. It was pierced in the back by two bullet holes, and the lining was stained with blood. Eye-witnesses described the shooting, and a physician described the location, direction and extent of the wounds on the body of the deceased. Held, the garment was properly admitted in evidence.

3. MURDER--Same. When the jacket was offered in evidence counsel for appellant stated that the defense would offer no evidence as to the shooting. Held insufficient to deprive the state of the right to the evidence afforded by the jacket.

4. MURDER--Same. After the jacket was introduced in evidence it was permitted to remain, without objection or request for its removal, in full view of the jury for five or six days, to the end of the trial. Held, not error.

5. EVIDENCE--Physical Objects Permitted to Remain in View--Attempt to Prejudice the Jury. The time when and the manner in which such objects may be presented and the length of time they shall remain on exhibition are subject to regulation by the trial court, and the exercise of discretion in this respect will be approved except in cases of abuse.

6. EVIDENCE--Same. Spectacular displays of physical objects germane to the transaction under investigation, cunningly devised to arouse passion or to excite prejudicial emotions on the part of the jury, should be thwarted or promptly suppressed; but legitimate evidence can not be excluded merely because it is grewsome and may tend to move the jury's feelings.

7. MURDER--Insanity--Partial or General--Instructions. If the trial court see fit it may recognize monomania, or so-called partial as distinguished from general insanity, when instructing the jury in a criminal case involving that form of mental derangement as a defense, but it is not imperative that it should do so; and if the proper tests of criminal responsibility for the act in question be stated in the instructions the substantial rights of the defendant are sufficiently protected.

Fred S. Jackson, attorney-general, and Ed. J. Fleming, county attorney, for The State; A. M. Jackson, and A. L. Noble, of counsel.

John W. Adams, George W. Adams, and L. C. Brown, for the appellant.

OPINION

BURCH, J.:

On Sunday, December 27, 1906, appellant waylaid his wife as she was returning from church, shot her twice through the body and killed her on a public street in the city of Arkansas City. He was convicted of murder in the first degree, but the judgment was reversed because of the admission of irrelevant and prejudicial evidence. (The State v. Moore, 77 Kan. 736, 95 P. 409.) He was tried a second time, was again convicted of murder in the first degree, and again appeals.

It is argued that error was committed in permitting the county attorney to present in his opening statement, and afterward to prove, the relations existing between appellant and his wife, and his conduct toward her, for a considerable period of time before the homicide. Perhaps some unnecessary trouble was taken to exploit the subject; but the plea was "not guilty," motive, malice, deliberation and premeditation were all in issue, and upon consideration of the whole case nothing prejudicial to appellant's substantial rights appears.

Error is assigned because the jacket which the deceased wore when she was shot was introduced in evidence. It was fully identified, was pierced in the back by two bullet holes, and its lining was stained with blood. When the jacket was offered counsel for appellant sought to forestall its exhibition to the jury by the statement to the court that no evidence would be introduced on the part of the defense concerning the shooting. In the case of State v. Jones, 89 Iowa 182, 56 N.W. 427, the syllabus reads:

"The fact that the defendant, in a prosecution for homicide, admits the killing, is not a ground for the exclusion of the weapon, with which the crime was committed, from evidence."

This is true for two reasons. The bare admission of the killing subtracts little from the issues, and it may be very important for the state, with the burden resting upon it to establish all the charges of the indictment or information beyond a reasonable doubt, to make its own case in its own way; and the evidence may be very valuable in illustrating or establishing other material facts. Beyond this, the statement under consideration was too carefully guarded. It did not admit the shooting or any other fact connected with the homicide, not even that appellant's wife was dead. Its import was merely that whatever the state proved relating to the shooting would not be contradicted, and the burden still rested on the state to prove every fact alleged in the information beyond a reasonable doubt.

Several witnesses who were present described all that occurred at the shooting, and a physician who examined the body of the deceased after death described the location, extent and effect of the wounds inflicted. Therefore it is argued that the evidence afforded by the jacket was wholly immaterial and unnecessary. The jacket supplied competent proof of relevant and material facts, and it is not for appellant to say how much proper evidence shall be produced against him. Especially is this true when he is standing upon all his rights under a general plea of not guilty. Perhaps all the eyewitnesses need not have been examined, but appellant had no right to insist that the state be limited to one or two or three of them. Perhaps the physician's testimony might have been confined to matters not proved by the jacket, but it could not be rejected because of the duplication. The inanimate garment told clearly and truthfully the story of a woman shot twice in the back, and hence, by legitimate inference, maliciously, wilfully, deliberately, premeditatedly, and without justification or excuse. It had a rightful place among the accusing witnesses, none of whom could be set aside at appellant's option because they were numerous.

It is argued that the introduction in evidence of the dead woman's bloody jacket destroyed the mental poise of the jury by riveting their minds upon a scene of carnage to the exclusion of any calm consideration of appellant's sanity, the only matter finally disputed by way of defense. The state rested under the necessity of establishing a tragedy involving the violent death of a human being from mortal wounds deliberately inflicted with malice aforethought--a thing most likely to include some blood along with the wickedness; perhaps, too, the terrifying report of pistol-shots in a peaceful street on a Sunday morning just after church, the piteous appeals for life and the agonized death screams of a defenseless woman as she is being shot down, and other shocking things. Such a subject is never a nice one to...