State v. Thompson

• Decision Date: 05 May 1905
• Citation: 103 N.W. 377,127 Iowa 440
• Parties: STATE v. THOMPSON.
• Court: Iowa Supreme Court

127 Iowa 440

103 N.W. 377

STATE

v.THOMPSON.

Supreme Court of Iowa.

May 5, 1905.

Appeal from District Court, Linn County; Wm. G. Thompson, Judge.

The accused was indicted for the offense of assault with intent to commit murder, and convicted of that of assault with intent to commit manslaughter. He appeals. Reversed.McCarthy & Lee and Redmond & Stewart, for appellant.

Charles W. Mullan, Atty. Gen., and Lawrence De Graff, Asst. Atty. Gen., for the State.

LADD, J.

The defendant and Pearl Jones, while living with their parents at Ames, became acquainted on the 7th day of July, 1902. He was then 18 years of age. She was a year older, and had been divorced from another after a matrimonial experience of six months. They became unduly intimate, and, as the outcome of efforts to separate them, she went to the home of a cousin in Cedar Rapids, and he followed after; searching in vain for employment in Chicago, and possibly elsewhere. In the evening of February 22, 1903, he called to see her, and was permitted to await in her room for her return. She came shortly after midnight, when an altercation ensued, in which he drew a pocketknife and cut her several times. She had manifested great affection for him, and the evidence tended to show that what he did was incited by her expressed determination to abandon him for a life of shame. Many assignments of error are argued, but none involving any save the most elementary principles of law. Thus appellant complains of the rulings by which proof of previous threats of violence toward Pearl Jones by the accused was received in evidence. This was admissible as bearing on his intention in the use made of the knife. Walker v. State, 85 Ala. 7, 4 South. 686, 7 Am. St. Rep. 17;State v. Fry, 67 Iowa, 475, 25 N. W. 738;Hodge v. State, 26 Fla. 11, 7 South. 593. But the court erred in allowing her cousin to testify, over objection, that a week before the altercation she had advised him not to allow the accused to come to his house; that she was afraid of him.

The father of Pearl Jones was a witness for the state, and, as a part of its evidence in chief, was permitted, over objection, to testify that the defendant had never been occupied, that he knew of, save as night clerk at a hotel for a couple of weeks; that he had gone to school very little; that he spent his time “bumming around town”; that he gave him no encouragement to visit Pearl; that he had ordered him out of his house, and had heard his wife do the same; that he had sent Pearl to Cedar Rapids on the 4th of February previous to get her out of defendant's company. All of this should have been excluded. The state is never permitted to assail the character of a defendant directly until he has placed it in issue. State v. Rainsbarger, 71 Iowa, 746, 31 N. W. 865. And even then this is not to be done by proof of particular instances of misconduct, but by evidence of his general reputation or actual character with respect to the trait involved. State v. Sterrett, 71 Iowa, 386, 32 N. W. 387;Gordon v. State, 3 Iowa, 410;State v. McGee, 81 Iowa, 17, 46 N. W. 764.

In this connection, the error in receiving the testimony of the sheriff of Story county, in rebuttal, that defendant for the two years past had been about town every night until from 11 to 3 o'clock, and that he associated with loafers, should be noticed. It was not in response to anything proven by defendant, and should have been excluded.

Immediately after defendant had given his version of the transaction under investigation, he was asked on cross-examination: “You never struck your sister in Pearl's presence, did you, and knock her down?” Objection as not...