State v. Thiele

• Decision Date: 08 April 1903
• Citation: 94 N.W. 256,119 Iowa 659
• Parties: STATE OF IOWA v. S. G. THIELE, Appellant
• Court: Iowa Supreme Court

94 N.W. 256

119 Iowa 659

STATE OF IOWA v. S. G. THIELE, Appellant

Supreme Court of Iowa, Des Moines

April 8, 1903

Appeal from Montgomery District Court.--HON. O. D. WHEELER, Judge.

THE defendant was accused and convicted of murder in the first degree, and, from judgment of imprisonment for life at hard labor, appeals.--Reversed.

REVERSED and REMANDED.

C. E Richards and P. W. Richards for appellant.

Chas W. Mullan, Attorney General, and Chas. A. Van Vleck Assistant Attorney General, for the State.

OPINION

LADD, J.

The accused, who had separated from his wife, Ida Marie Thiele, saw her pass the house in Villisca at which he was stopping. He immediately ran across the street and stabbed her with a knife three times. From the wounds so inflicted she died within a few minutes. At the trial, the defense of insanity was interposed.

The evidence tended to show that, for some time previous, the defendant acted peculiarly and talked incoherently; would get excited without cause, and frequently cry; was often dejected, and would look wild out of his eyes sometimes, and at others foolish; would run in doing ordinary work, and exercised no judgment in accomplishing what he undertook; had frequently claimed the Bible gave him the right to kill his wife; and the physicians testified that there was a depression in his skull which caused a derangement in the action of the brain. Nine nonexpert witnesses and three physicians expressed the opinion that he was insane. As bearing on this defense, the court instructed the jury that: "In considering this question of the insanity of the accused, you are to bear in mind that the presumption of the law is that he was sane. The burden is upon him to establish that at the time of the killing of said Ida Marie Thiele, if he did kill her, he was in such a state of insanity as will excuse the act. And if the evidence goes no further than to show that such a state of mind was possible or even probable, it is not sufficient. It must be sufficient to overcome the legal presumption of sanity, and satisfy you by a fair preponderance of the evidence that he was not sane. The defense of insanity is one which should be thoughtfully, thoroughly, and dispassionately considered by you. You should indulge in no prejudice against it, but you should give it a candid and fair consideration, with an honest design to reach the very truth of the matter." That the burden was upon the defendant to establish his insanity at the time of the killing by a preponderance of the evidence is not questioned, nor could it be in this state. State v. Felter, 32 Iowa 49; State v. Geddis, 42 Iowa 264; State v. Bruce, 48 Iowa 530; State v. Trout, 74 Iowa 545, 38 N.W. 405; State v. Mewherter, 46 Iowa 88; State v. Van Tassel, 103 Iowa 6, 72 N.W. 497; State v. Robbins, 109 Iowa 650, 80 N.W. 1061.

The critcism of the instruction is (1) that in effect it treats the presumption of sanity as having some weight as evidence, and (2) that the degree of proof exacted is more than a mere preponderance of the evidence. A similar instruction, from which the objectionable part of this may have been copied, was condemned in State v. Jones, 64 Iowa 349, 17 N.W. 911. Indeed, a comparison of this with the instruction in the Jones Case indicates that the very defect pointed out in the latter is here emphasized by omitting "merely" before "probable." When analyzed, what might the jury reasonably have understood from the language used? If the evidence made it appear that the defendant might possibly have been insane, this would not entitle him to an acquittal, for, at most, only a reasonable doubt would thereby be raised as to his sanity. This was correct under the decisions of this state, though contrary to the conclusion reached by the Supreme Court of the United States in Davis v. U. S., 160 U.S. 469 (16 S.Ct. 353, 40 L.Ed. 499), a case of first impression.

In saying he was not entitled to an acquittal if the evidence proved him probably insane, there was error. The existence of disease in the brain of a living being is seldom the subject of demonstrated or direct proof....