State v. Perry
| Decision Date | 20 November 1896 |
| Citation | 37 S.W. 804,136 Mo. 126 |
| Parties | The State v. Perry, Appellant |
| Court | Missouri Supreme Court |
Appeal from Douglas Circuit Court. -- Hon. W. N. Evans, Judge.
Affirmed.
R. F Walker, attorney general, and Morton Jourdan assistant attorney general, for the state.
(1) The testimony in this case shows abundantly and beyond any question the guilt of the defendant, and the judgment should not be disturbed because of this allegation of alleged error. It is only where there is a total failure of proof that this court will interfere and reverse a judgment. State v Fischer, 124 Mo. 462; State v. Punshon, 124 Mo 448; State v. Banks, 118 Mo. 117. (2) The verdict is in harmony with the law as declared by the court. No exceptions were taken to any of the instructions given. They are in the usual form, however, and the jury could not have been misdirected or misled in the discharge of its duty. (3) The testimony in this case shows the killing of the entire Sawyer family, and it was impossible to have tried this case without some reference being made to the other murdered persons besides the one charged in the indictment. The attention of the court is called to the same state of affairs and circumstances which existed in the killing of the Meeks family by the Taylor brothers (35 S.W. 92) and the killing of the Hall family by Howell (117 Mo. 307). The testimony shows that these persons were all killed at the same time, and reference could not be avoided and should not have been to those killed other than the one named in the indictment. The fact that they were dead together, their wounds, their condition, all constituted a form and proof of the res gestae.
At a special term of the circuit court of Douglas county which began on the twenty-ninth day of May, 1896, defendant was indicted for murder in the first degree for killing one Lafayette Sawyer. The trial on said indictment resulted in his conviction of the crime charged against him. From the judgment he has appealed.
Lafayette Sawyer, his wife and son, were murdered on the morning of May 20, 1896, at their home in Douglas county. The object of the murder was robbery. The evidence showed conclusively that on that morning the defendant, by means of a piece of gas pipe from eighteen to twenty-four inches in length and weighing about two pounds, killed the Sawyer family, consisting of E E. Sawyer, Lafayette Sawyer, and Mrs. Sawyer; that the defendant had planned the murder of this family sometime before; that on that morning he went to their residence in Douglas county, and upon the pretense that they had a sick horse at the barn, induced them to come from their house to go to the barn; that Lafayette Sawyer was the first one to appear, and that he was struck on the head with the gas pipe several blows until he was dead; that old man Sawyer came next, and in the same manner was disposed of; that his wife hearing his outcry, ran into the yard and was killed in like manner; that the defendant carried and dragged their bodies back into the house, piled them upon the floor under a bed and covered them with a bed mattress and bed clothes; that he then proceeded to search the house and secured in money $ 156 and some cents; that he then hitched up the team belonging to the Sawyers to a farm wagon and, taking a trunk which belonged to them and placing therein such articles as he had stolen from the house, put it and the gas pipe with which the execution had been performed,...
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