State v. Pearce
| Decision Date | 15 January 1894 |
| Docket Number | 8592 |
| Parties | State of Minnesota v. Thomas J. Pearce |
| Court | Minnesota Supreme Court |
Argued December 5, 1893.
Rehearing Denied 56 Minn. 226 at 239.
Appeal by defendant, Thomas J. Pearce, from an order of the District Court of Ramsey County, William Louis Kelly, J., made March 31, 1893, denying his motion for a new trial.
No errors appearing in the record, the order denying the motion for a new trial, and the judgment appealed from, are affirmed.
W. W Erwin, for appellant.
The Court erred in holding that the dying declaration of the woman was a sufficient corroboration of the testimony of her husband to warrant a conviction of the doctor. Her husband was an accomplice in the offense and no conviction can be had upon his testimony unless he was corroborated by evidence tending to connect the doctor with the commission of the offense. 1878 G. S. ch. 73, § 104.
The provision at the end of 1878 G. S. ch. 94, § 17, is not repealed by Penal Code, § 541, and no conviction can be had under Penal Code, § 162, upon the uncorroborated evidence of the woman. Hence, her dying declaration was not sufficient corroboration of the husband to warrant a conviction of the doctor. It would require other testimony than that of the husband, the accomplice, to convict. The disability of the woman under this statute is identical with that of an accomplice, and may be considered as such. When two or more accomplices are produced as witnesses, they are deemed not to corroborate each other, but the same rule is applied and the same corroboration required as if there were but one. 1 Greenl. Ev., § 381; United States v Hinz, 35 F. 272; Rex v. O'Neal, 7 C. & P. 168.
The Court instructed the jury that proof is beyond all reasonable doubt when it is such that it would impress the judgment of ordinarily prudent men with a conviction upon which they would act without hesitation in their own most important affairs and concerns of life. This we submit is not accurate. State v. Dineen, 10 Minn. 407; State v Shettleworth, 18 Minn. 208; Jane v. Commonwealth, 2 Met. (Ky.), 30; State v. Oscar, 7 Jones, 305; Ray v. State, 50 Ala. 104; Bradley v. State, 31 Ind. 492; State v. Crawford, 34 Mo. 200; Fuller v. State, 12 Ohio St. 433.
The Court erred in refusing to instruct the jury that if from the evidence and under the law as given them by the Court there arose in their minds, or in the minds of any one or more of them, a reasonable doubt as to the defendant's guilt, such one or more jurors should give the defendant the benefit of such doubt, and refuse to convict. Fassinow v. State, 89 Ind. 235; Castle v. State, 75 Ind. 147; Clem v. State, 42 Ind. 420; State v. Witt, 34 Kans. 488; Stitz v. State, 104 Ind. 145; State v. Sloan, 55 Ia. 220.
The Court erred in refusing to instruct the jury that the dying declarations of the deceased were not to be received with the same credit as though she had testified to the same under oath upon examination. 1 Greenl. Ev., § 156; Jackson v. Kniffen, 2 Johns. 31; State v. Vansant, 80 Mo. 67.
The Court erred in refusing to instruct the jury that the fact that the defendant had not testified as a witness was not to be taken into consideration by them in determining the question of his guilt, and that all inferences therefrom must be excluded from their minds. 1878 G. S. ch. 73, § 7; Farrel v. People, 133 Ill. 244; People v. Tyler, 36 Cal. 522; People v. Brown, 53 Cal. 66; State v. Cameron, 40 Vt. 555; Commonwealth v. Scott, 123 Mass. 239; Commonwealth v. Harlow, 110 Mass. 411.
H. W. Childs, Attorney General, and George B. Edgerton, his astant, for the state.
The Penal Code was designed as a codification of the criminal law of the state. Section 162 furnishes a complete definition of the crime for which the defendant was prosecuted. It embodies all the legislature desired to enact upon the subject and is a complete revision of the law, and wholly supplants all of 1878 G. S. ch. 94, §§ 16, 17. Penal Code, § 541, is a sweeping repeal of all of 1878 G. S. ch. 94, on this subject. The revision of the pre-existing law, or the codification thereof, wholly supplants the former law. All provisions thereof, whether or not embodied in the Code, are repealed. People v. Carr, 36 Hun, 488; Prince v. Laurel, 51 Md. 457; Gorham v. Linckett, 6 B. Mon. 146; Rogers v. Watrous, 8 Tex. 62; Harold v. State, 16 Tex.App. 157; Barker v. Bell, 46 Ala. 216; Hartley v. Hartley, 3 Met. (Ky.) 56; Thorpe v. Schooling, 7 Nev. 15; Ellis v. Paige, 1 Pick. 43; Pingree v. Snell, 42 Me. 53; Broaddus v. Broaddus, 10 Bush, 299; Campbell v. Case, 1 Dak. 17.
The jurors must have understood from the charge that each individual was to be convinced beyond a reasonable doubt; and that his judgment and conscience was to be satisfied to a moral certainty of the defendant's guilt.
The Court undoubtedly placed a proper construction upon 1878 G. S. ch. 73, § 7, in declining to comment on the failure of the defendant to testify. A strict construction of the statute enjoins the Court to silence. The California and Vermont authorities cited in defendant's brief are of no value here, as the statutes involved in those cases were essentially different from our own in this respect.
The defendant was indicted by the grand jury of the county of Ramsey for the crime of manslaughter in the first degree, and the indictment accused him of having committed the crime as follows: That at the city of St. Paul, on the 15th day of December, 1892, he feloniously used and employed upon the body of one Helen Clayton, a woman then pregnant with child, a catheter, by forcing and thrusting the same into the body and womb of said Helen Clayton, with intent then and there had and entertained by defendant to produce a miscarriage of said Helen Clayton, the use of said instrument, and the procuring of said miscarriage, or either of them, not being necessary to preserve the life of said Helen Clayton, or the life of the child with which the said Helen Clayton was then and there pregnant, and that said defendant did then and there inflict upon the body of said Helen Clayton mortal bruises and injuries, of which she died December 22, 1892.
Upon the trial, the defendant was found guilty of the crime charged in the indictment. The defendant moved for a new trial, and the same was denied by the trial court; and thereupon he appealed to this court, and, in his notice of appeal, he states that the appeal is taken from the order denying the motion for a new trial, and "from the judgment of said court entered in said cause on the 1st day of April, 1893."
The defendant, in his assignments of error, twelve in number, alleges various grounds upon which he claims the trial court erred, and upon which he claims that a new trial should be granted. Most of these assignments of error are obviously without merit, and, while we have carefully examined all of them, we shall not discuss them at length. It is claimed that there is no corroborative evidence as to the commission of the offense and the identity of the defendant, as required by law. Upon the trial, the evidence tended strongly to sustain the charge in the indictment, and the jury must have found the charge true.
Helen Clayton was a married woman, and her husband, Stephen D Clayton, who participated in the commission of the alleged offense, was a witness in behalf of the state, and testified that he was present when the crime was committed, and to seeing and knowing many of the facts in the case. That his own conduct, in the part he took, in the whole transaction, which resulted in the death of his wife, made him an accomplice in the crime, seems unquestionable, although he does not appear to have been a willing participant in the commission of the offense. The wife, Helen Clayton, says, in her dying declarations, that it was her fault and the doctor's, meaning, as we understand it, the defendant. She was pregnant with child, and, desiring to have an operation performed upon her, she and her husband went to the defendant, who was a physician, and requested him to produce an abortion or miscarriage upon the wife, which the defendant undertook to do for a money consideration, but the operation resulted in her death. But, however unwilling the husband might have been to have this operation performed upon his wife by the defendant, yet, yielding to the wish of the wife, and evidently overpersuaded by her entreaties and wishes, he must stand and be treated in law as an accomplice. It is the law of this state that a "conviction cannot be had upon the testimony of an accomplice, unless he is corroborated by such other evidence as tends to connect the defendant with the commission of the offense; and the corroboration is not sufficient if it merely shows the commission of the offense, or circumstances thereof." 1878 G. S. ch. 73, § 104. The dying declarations of the wife, Helen Clayton, were admitted in evidence by the trial court, to corroborate the evidence of her husband. As a first impression, it may seem to be an unsound rule that one who solicits the commission of an offense, and willingly submits to its being committed upon her own person, should not be deemed an accomplice, while those whom she has thus solicited should be deemed principal criminals in the transaction. But in cases of this kind the public welfare demands the application of this rule, and its exception from the general rule seems to be justified by the wisdom of experience. The wife, then, in this case, was not, within the rules of the law, an accomplice. She was the victim of the cruel act which resulted in her death. Misguided by her own desires, and mistaken in her belief, she, by the advice of the defendant, submitted to his...
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