State v. Redemeier

• Decision Date: 31 October 1879
• Citation: 71 Mo. 173
• Parties: THE STATE v. REDEMEIER, Appellant.
• Court: Missouri Supreme Court

71 Mo. 173

THE STATE

v.REDEMEIER, Appellant.

Supreme Court of Missouri.

October Term, 1879.

Appeal from St. Louis Court of Appeals.

AFFIRMED.

A. N. Merrick for appellant.

J. L. Smith, Attorney-General, for the State.

NORTON, J.

The defendant was indicted at the July term, 1878, of the St. Louis criminal court for murder in the first degree, for killing one Franz Vosz. The cause was tried at the November term, 1878, of said court, and defendant was found guilty and sentenced to be hanged. An appeal was taken to the St. Louis court of appeals, where the judgment of the criminal court was affirmed, and from which defendant has appealed to this court. The fact that deceased was killed by the defendant in the most brutal manner, without cause or excuse, is not disputed, but it is claimed that no criminality attaches to defendant because it is alleged that he was insane at the time the homicide was committed. The insanity of defendant was the only defense relied upon in the trial court, and a reversal of the judgment is sought mainly upon alleged error committed by the court in its charge given to the jury, and in refusing to give the declarations of law asked by defendant.

The charge complained of is as follows: “As a defense to this prosecution, the defendant by his counsel has interposed the plea of insanity. He says, that the act which he is alleged to have committed is not an act for which he can be held criminally responsible, in other words, that the act was and is excusable in law, because at the time of its commission, as charged, he was insane.

The term insanity, as used in this defense, means such a perverted and deranged condition of the mental and moral faculties as renders a person incapable of distinguishing between right and wrong, and makes him unconscious at times of the nature of the act he is about to commit. Such insanity, if proved to the reasonable satisfaction of the jury to have existed at the time of the commission of the act, is in law an excuse for it, however brutal or atrocious it may have been.

The law presumes every person to be of sound mind until the contrary is shown, and when, as in this case, insanity is interposed as a defense, the fact of the existence of such insanity at the time of the commission of the offense charged must be established by the evidence to the reasonable satisfaction of the jury, and the burden of proving this fact rests with the defendant.

The opinions on questions of insanity which have been given by the medical experts are testimony before you, and are subject to the same rules of credit or discredit as the testimony of other witnesses. The opinions neither establish nor tend to establish the truth of the facts upon which they are based. Whether the matter testified to by the witnesses in the cause, as facts, are true or false, is to be determined by the jury alone. Neither are the hypothetical questions put to the medical experts by the counsel in the cause, evidence of the truth of the matters stated in these questions.

Although the jury may believe and find from the evidence that the defendant did commit the act charged against him, yet, if they further find that, at the time he did so, he was in such an insane condition of mind that he could not distinguish between right and wrong, then such act was not malicious, and the jury should acquit him of the crime charged, on the ground of insanity, and so say in their verdict.

To establish his insanity, positive or direct testimony is not required. Circumstantial evidence which reasonably satisfies the minds of the jury that the defendant was, at the time the alleged shooting was done, incapable of distinguishing between right and wrong, or of comprehending the nature of the act, will be sufficient.

The jury are the sole and exclusive judges of the degree of credit which shall be given to the testimony in the case, and have the right to receive and credit as true, or to reject and discredit as untrue, the whole or any part of the testimony of any witness in the case. If, after the jury have carefully taken into account and considered all the evidence in the case, there remains in their minds a reasonable doubt of the guilt of the defendant, the law, in its humanity, gives to him the benefit of that doubt, and they should acquit. But, to authorize an acquittal on the ground of doubt alone, such doubt should be reasonable and substantial, and not a mere guess or conjecture of his “probable innocence.”

The objections urged to the above charge are that it does not properly define insanity, and that the rule as to the burden of proof when the defense is insanity, and the degree of proof sufficient to authorize a jury to find insanity, are not correctly stated. Testing these objections by repeated decisions of this court, it will be found that they are not well taken. These decisions, we think, clearly establish that the law presumes every person who has reached the years of discretion to be of sound mind and capable of committing crime, and that such a person, charged with the commission of crime, before he can escape the penalty affixed thereto, under the plea of insanity, must rebut such presumption by evidence which reasonably satisfies the jury that he was insane at the time the act was committed, or that his mind was so diseased as to render him incapable of distinguishing between right and wrong in respect to the act for which he is sought to be made criminally responsible; that the question of insanity is one of fact to be determined by the jury, and that, when the unlawful killing is proved by the State or admitted by the accused, the State may rest upon the legal presumption of the sanity of the accused till he shows the contrary; that the burden of proving insanity rests upon the party setting it up, and that, to discharge himself of this burden, it is not necessary to introduce evidence which establishes, beyond a reasonable doubt, his insanity, but only sufficient to reasonably satisfy the jury that it existed at the time the offense was committed; that, if the preponderance of the evidence offered establishes insanity, it is sufficient. Baldwin v. State, 12 Mo. 223; State v. Huting, 21 Mo. 464; State v. McCoy, 34 Mo. 531; State v. Klinger, 43 Mo. 127; State v. Hundley, 46 Mo. 414; State v. Smith, 53 Mo. 267; State v. Holme, 54 Mo. 153; State v. Simms, 68 Mo. 305. In the case of the State v. McCoy, supra, it was held “that it is incumbent on the State to prove every fact necessary to establish the crime of murder, which necessarily includes the sanity of the prisoner; but the burden of proving such sanity of the prisoner is fully met by the presumption of law that every person is of sound mind until the contrary appears; and he who undertakes to escape the penalty of the law by means of the plea of insanity must rebut such presumption by proof entirely satisfactory to the jury. It is a defense to be made out by the prisoner, and by proof that will satisfy the jury that he was incapable of distinguishing between right and wrong.” The instructions of the court as to the burden of proof of insanity and the quantum of evidence to establish it are justified, not only by the case last cited, but by all the cases hereinbefore cited.

It is also insisted that the capacity of defendant to distinguish between right and wrong was the only test laid down by the court in its charge for the guidance of the jury in determining the question of insanity, and that, for this reason, it is erroneous. If the charge means that, and nothing more, the court would have been authorized to give it under the authority of the case last cited, and 2 Greenleaf Ev., § 373; Rex v. McNaghten, 10 Cl. & Fin. 200; Rex v. Offord, 5 Carr. & P. 168; Commonwealth v. Mosler, 4 Barr 267; Freeman v. People, 4 Denio 9. But we think the construction placed by counsel on the instruction is too narrow, and that the capacity of defendant to distinguish between right and wrong was not the sole and only test by which the jury were to be governed in determining the criminal responsibility of defendant, because they were expressly told that, if defendant was incapable of comprehending, or was unconscious of the nature of the act at the time he committed it, they would acquit.

It is also earnestly and ably argued by counsel that the rule as to the degree of evidence necessary to establish insanity, as adopted in this State, should be modified and...