State v. Richardson

• Decision Date: 01 December 1938
• Docket Number: 27200.
• Citation: 84 P.2d 699,197 Wash. 157
• Parties: STATE v. RICHARDSON et al.
• Court: Washington Supreme Court

84 P.2d 699

197 Wash. 157

STATE v. RICHARDSON et al.

No. 27200.

Supreme Court of Washington

December 1, 1938

Department 2.

Del Richardson and Claire Richardson were convicted of murder in the first degree, and they appeal.

Affirmed.

Appeal from Superior Court, King County; Donald A. McDonald, judge.

Jerry Finch, John F. Garvin, and J. E. Bakken, all of Seattle, for appellants.

B. Gray Warner, John M. Schermer, and Harry A. Bowen, all of Seattle for the State.

SIMPSON Justice.

The defendants were charged by information with murder in the first degree. Del Richardson was charged with the actual commission of the crime, and Claire Richardson with aiding and abetting him in its commission.

The case came on for trial, and the jury returned a verdict of guilty, with a finding that the death penalty be not inflicted. Motion for a new trial having been made and overruled, judgment and sentence were entered, from which the defendants appeal.

The following are appellants' assignments of error: (a) In holding that the corpus delicti had been proven; (b) in submitting to the jury the question of first degree murder (c) admission of evidence; (d) denial of motions to strike evidence; and (e) misconduct of the prosecuting attorney.

Appellants contend that the corpus delicti was sought to be shown by proof of motive on the part of appellants, and was in fact not proved in any manner.

The evidence, aside from that relating to motive, is essentially as follows: Appellants are brother and sister. Early in the morning of Thursday, October 28, 1937, the appellants and deceased registered at a Seattle hotel under the names of Mr. and Mrs. Brumbaugh and Miss Claire Brumbaugh, and were assigned to rooms 406 and 407, which had a connecting bathroom. At two o'clock Friday morning the hotel clerk went to the rooms because other guests in the hotel had complained of noises there. He heard sobbing when he reached the room. Appellant Del Richardson appeared at the door and said his wife had been drinking. About six o'clock appellants left in their car and returned about two hours later. They then ordered three bottles of beer. Saturday morning between twelve and two o'clock guests in the hotel heard a woman crying and saying: 'I never did anything like that in my life and you can't make me. You can go ahead and shove me out the window, I don't care.' A short time after, the same woman screamed and said: 'Don't do that.' At about 1:30 A. M. the manager heard a loud scream from one of the two rooms. He went to the door of room 406, and, after knocking twice, was admitted by Claire Richardson. Going into room 407 through the bathroom he saw Del Richardson standing about two feet from the bed where a woman was lying with the bed clothes covering her so that only the top of her head could be seen. She did not make a sound. Del Richardson was told that if there was any more disturbance the police would be called, and he promised to keep quiet.

At approximately two o'clock the same morning the night clerk went to the rooms, and when he approached, he heard a girl sobbing. The door was opened by Del Richardson, who apologized for the noise that had been made. At 6:15 the same morning the clerk again went to room 406 and was met by Claire Richardson, who was told that the parties in the rooms would have to vacate because of the disturbance they had made. Shortly afterward Claire Richardson asked the clerk to call her a taxi. At 9:15 A. M. she took the taxicab and went to a drug store, stopping on the way at a rooming house. Upon returning to the hotel she talked over the long distance telephone to Barbara Adams, proprietor of the West Rooms in Portland, Oregon, saying that 'Pat' had fallen into a tub of hot water and might die, and asked Miss Adams to send her some money. Later she called and made the same request. Shortly after the telephone call beer and some food were sent to the rooms. During the morning Claire Richardson asked the maid at the hotel to give her some sheets and pillow cases, which were taken to the rooms. In room 406 the maid saw Del Richardson standing by the bed upon which a naked young woman was lying. The woman was breathing heavily as if snoring. After leaving the sheets the maid went to room 407 and made the bed in that room.

At twelve o'clock, noon, Claire Richardson called Dr. Carl A. Stromberg, who arrived shortly thereafter and found the deceased severely burned and unconscious. The doctor instructed appellant Del Richardson to call an ambulance and, on being told by appellant that deceased was an addict, he gave her one-sixth of a grain of morphine. The deceased was admitted to Harborview hospital at three o'clock on the afternoon of October 30, and from four o'clock on the same day she was under the care of Dr. Hilton W. Rose, a burn specialist, until she died November 3. Dr. Rose made an examination of Mrs. Richardson and testified that her left cheek was bruised, her left eye was almost swollen shut, the upper part of her left forehead was bruised as was the right side of her arm, her nose was severely bruised, there were many bruises on her left arm, and forty per cent of her body was burned to the extent of first and second degree burns. Practically all of her fingernails were missing. A small strip of flesh around each wrist was not burned. While in Harborview hospital the deceased was given the best treatment known to medical science, but did not regain consciousness, although the specialist testified that the burns themselves were not sufficient to justify unconsciousness for that period. Dr. Rose went to appellant Del Richardson, told him his wife was in a critical condition, and asked to be told what had happened so that the best treatment might be given her. Appellant answered that he didn't know and had nothing to say.

After death the deceased's brain was examined by brain specialists who found two bruises on the outside of the brain, one on the left side and the other over the right forehead. The head had suffered three separate concussions, one over the left ear, one over the right forehead, and the other at the back of the skull. The doctors testified that the three distinct blows of a violent nature must have been made by a dull instrument. The attending physician concluded the primary cause of death was bronchial pneumonia though she had no pneumonia when she entered the hospital. The contributing causes of the death were burns and concussions.

An examination of the rooms occupied by appellants and deceased, after they had left, disclosed them to be in bad disorder. In room 407 the sheets were torn in half, and the bed pad was damp and discolored. In room 406 the bed was soiled, and there was blood on it. Two small pools of blood, broken beer bottles, and other glass were on the floor. Blood spots were found in the bathroom, fingernails were found in the room, and two wet neckties, a fingernail and a silk stocking were found on the ground directly beneath the window of room 407. The testimony showed that the weather had been dry. A test of the hot water in the room showed that it reached a temperature of 140~ after it had been allowed to run two or three inches in the bottom of the bathtub, and that the body would have to remain in water of that temperature at least five minutes in order to make the burns shown on the body of the deceased. After a thorough examination Dr. Rose testified that, from the location of the burns on deceased's arm and a small unburned area on the small of her back, her arms must have been tied while she was in the water and that certain insulating material such as the wet ties must have been bound around her wrists.

Appellant, Del Richardson, in explaining the burns on the body of his wife to the police, said that she was a narcotic addict and had become violent and tried to jump out of the window; that at about two o'clock in the morning she had gone into the bathroom for the purpose of taking a bath; he heard her scream and went in and pulled her out of the bathtub. Claire Richardson explained that the deceased was a narcotic addict, and that she made the noise in the hotel rooms at a time when she was refused the opportunity of securing any narcotics. The doctor testified that after he had made a narcotic injection, her reaction was negative. In other words, that the reaction was that of one who had never been addicted to the use of narcotics in any form. The statements made by both appellants to the police were to the effect that no one else had been in their rooms during the period of time they were there except the hotel manager and the clerk who came to remonstrate about the noise.

This court, in the case of State v. Gates, 28 Wash. 689, 69 P. 385, approved the following definition of corpus delicti found in 7 Am. & Eng. Enc. Law, 2d Ed., p. 861: 'The corpus delicti is a compound fact, made up of two things: First, the existence of a certain act or result forming the basis of the criminal charge; and, second, the existence of criminal agency as the cause of this act or result.' [page 387.]

The meaning of the term is well stated in 13 R.C.L. 737, as follows: '* * * The discovery and identification of a dead body or its remains as that of a person charged to have been slain having been introduced to establish the basis of the corpus delicti, the next step in the process, the one which serves to complete the proof of the indispensable preliminary fact, is to show that the death has been occasioned by the criminal act or agency of another person.'

Apppellants contend that Mrs. Richardson died of pneumonia which was not caused by the concussions and burns, and that the death might well have been occasioned by a mistake in treatment at the...