State v. Sloan

• Decision Date: 31 May 1916
• Docket Number: No. 19362.,19362.
• Citation: 186 S.W. 1002
• Parties: STATE v. SLOAN.
• Court: Missouri Supreme Court

186 S.W. 1002

STATE v. SLOAN.

No. 19362.

Supreme Court of Missouri, Division No. 2.

May 31, 1916.

Appeal from St. Louis Circuit Court; Wm. T. Jones, Judge.

Pearl Sloan was convicted of murder in the first degree, and she appeals. Judgment affirmed.

Defendant was convicted in the circuit court of the city of St. Louis of murder in the first degree, for that, as it was alleged, she shot and killed one Guy Jones. The jury fixed her punishment at imprisonment in the penitentiary for the term of her natural life. From this verdict and the judgment based thereon she has, after the usual motions, appealed. Some three or four years before the homicide, which occurred on the 17th of July, 1914, the defendant, a married woman, was residing in St. Louis with her husband. Deceased, a bootblack, and at odd times a washer of automobiles in a garage, came to the house of defendant to board. Shortly after becoming a boarder in her home he became criminally intimate with defendant. Defendant's husband, learning of the relations existing between defendant and deceased, left her. Thereafter defendant and deceased lived together in the city of St. Louis in adultery until a time shortly before the date of the homicide for which she is herein prosecuted. For some reason unnecessary here to seek or to set down, deceased became desirous of getting rid of the defendant. Jealously resenting this, defendant began to go to the place where deceased was employed, and to call him up over the telephone in an effort to induce him to continue his relations with her, and she also began to make threats as to what she should do in the event of his refusing longer to live with her. On the night of the homicide defendant appeared at a certain saloon wherein deceased was, and called him out on the sidewalk. After remaining in conversation with deceased some 30 minutes and upon his turning away as if to leave her, she suddenly drew a pistol from under her apron and fired at him, striking him in the neck and inflicting a wound from which he died shortly afterward. After firing the first shot — the one apparently which produced the mortal wound — she snapped the pistol at him a time or two as he lay prone upon the sidewalk and then fired three more shots at him. She was arrested by the police as she stood over deceased again snapping the pistol at him. These facts as to the immediate matters which transpired just prior to and at the moment of the shooting are abundantly shown by numerous witnesses offered by the state. The killing is admitted, but defendant urges that she acted in self-defense and claims in her own testimony that at the time she shot the deceased, he had already struck her with a monkey-wrench and was engaged in trying to kill her therewith. No other witness except defendant saw this wrench. Defendant contends that it was carried away by some unknown person immediately after deceased fell, and just before she was taken in custody. In this she is contradicted by numerous witnesses and corroborated by none. From her friends and relatives, particularly from her two small sons, her mother, and her sister, much testimony came in as to threats on the part of deceased toward defendant, and as to repeated assaults and other physical abuse and mistreatment prior to the last and fatal meeting. The court instructed, among other and formal matters, on murder in the first degree and on manslaughter, as well as on self-defense. But four points are urged upon us for reversal; two of these have to do with the evidence and the sufficiency thereof. We will not cumber the record with an examination of the question whether the evidence...