State v. Santino

• Decision Date: 31 May 1916
• Docket Number: No. 19370.,19370.
• Citation: 186 S.W. 976
• Parties: STATE v. SANTINO.
• Court: Missouri Supreme Court

186 S.W. 976

STATE v. SANTINO.

No. 19370.

Supreme Court of Missouri, Division No. 2.

May 31, 1916.

Appeal from St. Louis Circuit Court; Glendy B. Arnold, Judge.

Pasquele Santino was convicted of arson, and he appeals. Reversed and remanded.

Willis H. Clark, and Fauntleroy, Cullen & Hay, all of St. Louis, for appellant. John T. Barker, Atty. Gen., and Lee B. Ewing and Thomas J. Higgs, Asst. Attys. Gen., for the State.

WALKER, J.

In an information filed in the circuit court of the city of St. Louis defendant was charged with arson in the third degree, as defined in section 4511, R. S. 1909. Upon a trial he was convicted, and sentenced to two years' imprisonment in the penitentiary. We are asked to review the judgment of his conviction.

At the time of the fire defendant, with his wife, lived in three rooms on the second floor of a three-story building on Franklin avenue in the city of St. Louis. Other tenants had rooms on the same floor, and the third story was also used for residential purposes. The evening of the fire, at 6:30 o'clock, or possibly a little later, the defendant left his rooms to attend a lodge meeting, which was to be held some 12 or 15 blocks distant. Upon leaving he said to his wife that he would not be at home until late. Soon after his departure she locked up the rooms and went to an apartment in the same building of a Mrs. Whalen, and insisted on the latter's daughter accompanying her to a picture show. The daughter had arranged to visit a sick friend in another part of the city, and defendant's wife said she would accompany her. They went, and were absent about an hour. When they returned defendant's wife went to Mrs. Whalen's rooms, instead of to her own, and was there when the alarm of fire was given.

One John Burden, who lived across the hall from defendant's rooms, heard an explosion, followed by a crash as of broken glass, and, rushing out of his rooms, discovered that the bedroom and kitchen in defendant's rooms were on fire. He at once sent in an alarm, and the fire company responded in a few minutes. The doors were broken open and the fire extinguished. The air of the rooms was redolent with the odor of gasoline or benzine, some witnesses say also of turpentine, and it was found necessary to employ a chemical solution to extinguish the flames; water being ineffectual. Gasoline was found in one or two vessels in the kitchen and bedroom, and a bed, which had nothing thereon but two pillows and an old quilt or comfort, was saturated with the fluid. An examination of the drawers and the interior of a wardrobe in the room showed that they were empty, with the exception of two old work dresses, probably belonging to the defendant's wife. A week or two before the fire visitors at the apartments had noticed the rather profuse manner in which they were furnished, not only with furniture itself, but hangings and bric-a-brac. Much of this furniture and the furnishings were not in the rooms when they were examined by members of the fire company and others who testified for the state. Others than defendant and his wife did not have access to the rooms. The contents of the rooms were insured for $2,000. Defendant, his wife, and two fire adjusters employed by him testified that four or five days after the fire the articles scheduled in the insurance policy were all in the rooms, except those destroyed or injured by the fire; that there was no evidence of any of the articles having been saturated with gasoline or a like fluid when they made the inventory. A number of the defendant's fellow countrymen testified as to his former good character.

I. We give no credence to the covert insinuation running through defendant's statement of facts that others than defendant and his wife had opportunities of ingress to the rooms. If the witness Burden, against whom this insinuation is directed, had keys to the rooms, there would have existed no necessity for forcing the doors open when the firemen came. Burden was there, and his rooms were just across the hall from those of the defendant. Besides, there is no evidence of anything in the character or conduct of the witness Burden, or his former relations with the defendant, to give any substantial foundation to the insinuation. Absent any supporting evidence, it has no place in an argument, much less a statement of facts in this case.

The very nature of the crime of arson is such that it becomes necessary in many cases to rely upon circumstantial evidence to establish the guilt of the accused. The locked rooms, nonaccessible, under a reasonable reading of the evidence, except to the defendant and his wife; the presence in unusual places in the rooms of quantities of gasoline, a most active agent in promoting a conflagration; the occurrence of the conflagration under the circumstances shown; the difference in the furnishings of the rooms immediately after and several days prior and subsequent to the fire; the absence of defendant and his wife at the time of the fire; and the presence of a $2,000 insurance policy on defendant's property — constituted a chain of circumstances of sufficient strength to authorize the trial court in submitting the issue of defendant's guilt to the jury. The first assignment of error is therefore overruled.

II. The contention is made that the instructions are contradictory and misleading. This contention is based upon a mistaken theory as to the manner in which the instructions should be read and interpreted, and also upon a misconception as to the distinctive meaning of the words "motive" and "intent" employed in defining the offense. Read as a whole, the meaning of the instructions is obvious, and their application to the case under the evidence is not subject to valid criticism. State v. Weisman, 238 Mo. 547, 141 S. W. 1108; State v. Montgomery, 230 Mo. 660, 132 S. W. 232; State v. Hall, 228 Mo. 546, 128 S. W. 745; Young v. Com., 12 Bush (Ky.) 243; State v. Babcock, 51 Vt. 570.

But as to the second ground of the contention: Motive and intent are in no sense synonymous. They mean two different things, and this difference is clearly recognized in the instructions. Motive is the moving cause which induces action; it has to do wholly with desire. Intent is the purpose or design with which an act is done, and involves the will. Com. v. Raymond, 97 Mass. 567. Motive is not an essential ingredient of crime; intent is always so, whether the offense be of common-law or statutory origin. The Supreme Court of Tennessee in well-chosen words thus puts the ever-present necessity of intent as an element of crime:

"The intention to commit the crime is of the essence of the crime, and to hold [one] criminally responsible for an offense, of the commission of which he was ignorant at the time, would be intolerable tyranny." Duncan v. State, 7 Humph. (Tenn.) 148.

The absence of any motive for a crime may be considered by the jury as a matter of evidence in determining whether the accused is guilty of the act charged; but,...