State v. Moore

• Decision Date: 26 February 1901
• Citation: 160 Mo. 443,61 S.W. 199
• Parties: STATE v. MOORE.
• Court: Missouri Supreme Court

61 S.W. 199

160 Mo. 443

STATE v. MOORE.

Supreme Court of Missouri, Division No. 2.

February 26, 1901.

HOMICIDE — CRIMINAL LAW — CONFESSIONS— QUESTIONS FOR JURY—INSTRUCTIONS.

1. A confession procured by express or implied representations that it is the only way to protect accused from mob violence is not admissible.

2. Where the evidence is conflicting as to whether a confession was voluntary, or was procured by representations that it was the only way to save accused from mob violence, the admissibility of the confession is a question for the jury.

3. Where the evidence is conflicting as to whether a confession was voluntary, it is error to refuse to instruct as to the rules governing the admissibility of confessions.

4. A request for an erroneous instruction is sufficient to require the court to instruct as to the questions presented by such erroneous instruction.

Appeal from circuit court, Stoddard county; J. L. Fort, Judge.

Elijah L. Moore was convicted of murder, and he appeals. Reversed.

Wammack & Mosely, for appellant. The Attorney General, for the State.

SHERWOOD, J.

Charged in the indictment with murdering his father, Jesse W. Moore, by shooting him with a shotgun, defendant, being put on his trial, was found guilty of that charge and sentenced to be hanged; hence this appeal. There have been neither statement, assignment of errors, nor briefs on behalf of defendant, nor has the state filed any statement or brief herein, so we have been compelled to gather the facts of the case for ourselves, and as best we could.

Jesse W. Moore was killed on the 16th of November, 1899, while sleeping in his bed in a room of his dwelling house; and the weapon used was a double-barreled shotgun belonging to him, and which was evidently but a few feet distant from the head and face of the victim at the time the gun was discharged. It seems that this discharge occurred about 3 or 3:30 a. m. In the room where the murder occurred there were three beds,—one occupied by the father; one occupied by his son, the defendant, a boy about 19 years old; and the other by two small boys, his brothers, the younger some 7 years old. There was a hall eight feet wide between the room already mentioned and the one occupied by the wife and mother, who had with her in the bed where she slept a young child. A sister of defendant, 15 years old, also slept in the bed with her mother. The pants of Jesse W. Moore lay on the foot of the bed in which he had slept, and in one of the pockets a pocketbook containing some sixty-odd dollars in money was found undisturbed when the inquest was held. Defendant stated when a witness at the inquest, and during the day of the inquest, that the report of the gun did not awaken him or any of the rest of the family. He did not deny making this statement, nor did he attempt explanation of how he knew the discharge of the gun did not awaken any of the rest of the family. Neither the wife and mother nor the daughter and sister testified at the trial. A man named Huff had been taken from the county jail on the same night that Jesse W. Moore was killed, and hanged by a mob; and of this fact defendant became aware on the day of the inquest, on which day he was arrested. Defendant afterwards confessed to J. W. Farris, the prosecuting attorney (so Farris states), that he had murdered his father by shooting him with the shotgun while he was asleep in bed. This confession is said to have taken place on Saturday night, the 18th of November, two nights after the homicide. Speaking of the confession, and preceding and attendant on it, Farris says of defendant: "I had heard or understood that he desired to make a statement on Friday. Circuit court was in session. I was busy before the grand jury and in the court all day, and busy at nights, and I couldn't find time to go over to talk to him. I also received the same word again on Saturday from different parties,—from Sheriff Evans, as testified to, and also from Squire Mayes, —that he was liable to make a confession. I don't remember what Squire Mayes said about it, just now, but on Saturday I couldn't yet go. I was busy, and I told the sheriff that, after I got my supper and a little rest, I would come uptown after supper and have a talk with the young man. So I came to the jail somewhere about 8 o'clock, I suppose, on Saturday night. Mr. Evans went upstairs and brought Mr. Elijah L. Moore down. I think Mr. Busby and his wife, perhaps, were somewhere about the jail. Perhaps they were in the other room. And Mr. Evans came down. I had the St. Louis Republic. I spoke to Lige, and he spoke. He took a chair and sat down. Evans and he commenced a conversation. I took no part in that conversation at all at that time. I sat there and read my paper, and listened to the conversation of the sheriff and the defendant, Elijah L. Moore. Evans talked to him some ten or fifteen minutes, I presume, and finally I dropped my paper, and perhaps I put in a few words with him about the matter; and he says to Mr. Evans, `I want to have a private conversation with Mr. Farris,' and asked Mr. Evans to go out of the room. Lige commenced the conversation with me, and he and I talked for some little while, —ten minutes I presume, maybe 15,—about the killing of his father. I says, `Lige, the people in your country believe that you know something about who killed your father, and,' I says, `I believe it, too.' He at the time denied it. I asked him, then, how he could explain that he didn't hear the report of a shotgun fired off in the room in which he was sleeping. Well, I don't remember what his answer was to that. I says to Lige, `If my wife were to be murdered to-night in the room where I was sleeping, and I didn't hear the report of the gun, and I would get up the next morning and say to my neighbors that somebody has come and murdered my wife, and I never heard the report of the gun, don't you believe that they would think that I murdered her?' Lige dropped his head; said, `Yes; I think they would,' or something like that. Then I took the hired girl as an example. I says, `Suppose the hired girl sleeps in another room, and was shot with a shotgun, and none hears the report, and I would go out the next morning and say that some one came there and murdered her, and I nor my wife never heard the report of the gun, like you and your family say you never heard the report of no gun; don't you think the people would think I knew all about the shooting?' He still got weaker. Well, I talked with him on a strain along that line some ten minutes or more. And finally he says, `Mr. Farris,' he says, `I do know something about it. I do know,' he says, `who done the shooting.' And there were tears in his eyes about that time. `Now,' I says, `Lige, just tell the truth about it. The truth is all we want.' `Well,' he say, `my sister done it.' His 15 year old sister; called her name. I believe her name is Mary. Anyhow, he said his sister done it. I says, `Lige, you say you didn't hear the gun fire, and you testified down there before the coroner's jury, and all of your folks did, that this gun had been missing for a period of ten days. Now, what do you say about where that gun was?' Lige says, `Well, she had that gun hid behind the flour barrels in the kitchen.' I says, `Lige, how many flour barrels were there in the room?' He says, `There were four.' He says, `My father only a few days before that' (and I believe he named himself) `had been out to Dexter, at Jorndt's Mill, and he had a lot of wheat deposited there, so he said, and he got four barrels of flour and brought home.' I says, `Tell me what particular part of the room, and whereabouts, this gun was hid.' He says, `It was hid in the corner behind the very furthest flour barrel from the eating table where we always eat.' I says, `How did you keep the gun concealed from your father and mother?' He says, `We throwed some old rags over it;' then he put an apron over it to keep it from being seen. `Well,' I says, `what time in the night, now, was it that your sister fired this shot?' He says, `It was about three o'clock in the morning.' I says, `Did you know she was going to fire it?' He says, `No; I knew she was going to kill him sometime, but I didn't know when it was.' `Now,' I says, `Lige, was that the first time that your sister ever fired a shotgun?' He says, `Yes,' he says, `it was.' `Well, now,' I says, `Lige, that seems rather peculiar to me, that a young girl who has never fired a gun before in her life would walk in there at night and get a gun out and shoot her father.' I says, `It seems to me that she would be afraid to shoot the gun.' Then I says to him, `I can't believe that you told me the truth. Now, you tell it to me, Lige.' Then he dropped his head,—and tears in his eyes again,—and he says, `No,' he says, `my sister didn't shoot him.' He says, `I will tell you the truth this time for sure, so help me God,' or something like that. Then he says, `Oh, God, pity me!'—something like that. He used so much praying words, I can't tell you all he did say,—`I killed my poor old father myself.' He says, `Oh, God! if I had it back I wouldn't have done it for ten thousand dollars.' He says, `If I had it back I wouldn't have done it the next minute after I done it, at all, for anything on earth.' `Now,' I says, `Lige, you are telling me the truth this time, are you?' He says, `Yes.' He says, `I done it, but,' he says, `I took the gun down myself out of the rack and gave it to my sister, and she did hide the gun behind the flour barrel, but I got the gun and done the shooting myself.' `Well,' I says, `Lige, when was it this gun was hid there?' He says, `On Sunday evening, about ten days before the killing took place on Thursday morning.' I says, `What time was it the gun was hid?' He says, `Well, my father that Sunday evening about sundown or dusk went down to some neighbor's house — I don't know whether Mr. Manion's, or who, somewhere close...