State v. Turco
| Decision Date | 06 October 1922 |
| Citation | 118 A. 579 |
| Parties | STATE v. TURCO. |
| Court | New Jersey Supreme Court |
(Syllabus by the Court.)
Error to Court of Oyer and Terminer, Sussex County.
Antonio Turco was indicted for murder, and the jury returned a verdict of guilty without designating the degree, and he brings error. Reversed and venire de novo awarded.
Argued June term, 1922, before GUMMERE, C. J., and SWAYZE and TRENCHARD, JJ.
Peter J. McGinnis, of Paterson (Ward & McGinnis, of Paterson), Win. A. Dolan, of Newton (Egbert Rosecrans, of Blairstown, and Marks Wolff, of New York City, on the brief), for plaintiff in error.
Lewis Van Blarcom, of Newton, Michael Dunn, of Paterson (Theodore E. Dennis, of Hamburg, and Sylvester C. Smith, Jr., of Phillipsburg, on the brief), for the State.
TRENCHARD, J. Antonio Turco, together with others, was indicted in Sussex county for the murder of one Albert Koster. Turco had a separate trial. At the trial the jury returned a verdict of "guilty" (without designating the degree), and without more the Jury was discharged. The defendant then moved in arrest of judgment on the ground that the verdict was insufficient because it did not designate the degree. That motion was overruled, and thereupon the court pronounced judgment of death against the defendant. We are constrained to think that the verdict is insufficient to legally support the judgment, and that the judgment must therefore be reversed and a new trial awarded.
Such an indictment is an indictment "for the crime of murder, without regard to the degree." Graves v. State, 45 N. J. Law, 347, 46 Am. Rep. 778.
Under that statute, as was said in Graves v. State, 45 N. J. Law, 359, 46 Am. Rep. 778:
According as the defendant "shall or shall not be proved to have committed the crime of murder, he will be convicted or acquitted; and if convicted, according as it Shall be proved that he committed it under circumstances which characterize the one degree or the other, so it will be found or adjudged with a view to bis punishment."
The jury before whom the trial is had, if t...
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State v. Vaszorich
...Verdicts Appellants contend that the jury verdict against each was fatally defective under the principle expressed in State v. Turco, 98 N.J.L. 61, 118 A. 579 (Sup.Ct.1922); State v. Cooper, 2 N.J. 540, 67 A.2d 298 (1949); State v. Cleveland, 6 N.J. 316, 78 A.2d 560, 23 A.L.R.2d 907 (1951),......
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State v. Williams
...v. Greely, supra, 11 N.J. at page 491, 95 A.2d at page 3. Speaking of the statute, the former Supreme Court in State v. Turco, 98 N.J.L. 61, 63, 118 A. 579, 580 (Sup.Ct.1922), 'Under that statute, * * * according as the defendant 'shall or shall not be proved to have committed the crime of ......
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State v. Greely, s. A--88
...degree or in the second degree.' The adjudications construing this mandatory provision are clear and precise. In State v. Turco, 98 N.J.L. 61, 118 A. 579, 580 (Sup.Ct.1922), cited and followed in the other cases hereafter mentioned, the court, referring to the statute, '* * * a verdict * * ......
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State v. Cooper
...not left to conjecture; it is inconceivable that it would not have so provided. This was the holding in the case of State v. Turco, 98 N.J.L. 61, 118 A. 579 (Sup.Ct. 1922). There, also, the evidence tended to show a killing in the commission of a robbery; and there, also, the jury were inst......