State v. Watson

• Citation: 65 Me. 74
• Parties: STATE v. JONATHAN WATSON.
• Decision Date: 26 February 1876
• Court: Supreme Judicial Court of Maine (US)

65 Me. 74

STATE v. JONATHAN WATSON.

Supreme Judicial Court of Maine.

February 26, 1876

1875.

ON EXCEPTIONS from the superior court.

INDICTMENT for arson under R. S., c. 119, §§ 1, 2.

The case and the questions raised are stated in the opinion.

N Webb and H. B. Cleaves, for the defendant.

Under the general principle that where the inference requires the judgment of persons of peculiar skill and knowledge on the particular subject, the testimony of such as to their opinion and judgment upon the facts is admissible evidence to enable the jury to come to a correct conclusion, the counsel cited the following cases where experts had been admitted; an observer of the habits of certain fish in overcoming obstructions in the ascent of rivers; Cottrill et al. v Myrick, 12 Me. 222; a seaman as to the proper storing of a cargo; Price v. Powell, 3 Const. 322; a mason as to the time requisite for the walls of a house to become so dry as to be safe for human habitation; Smith v Gugerty, 4 Barb., S. C. R., 614; a master engineer and builder of steamboats as to the manner of a collision, 18 Ohio 375; a practical surveyor as to whether piles of stones and marks on trees were monuments or boundaries; Davis v. Mason, 4 Pick. 156.

C. F. Libby, for the state.

BARROWS J.

Watson was convicted upon certain counts in an indictment charging him with wilfully and maliciously setting fire to a barn at Cape Elizabeth, belonging to Simon Jordan, with intent to burn said Jordan's dwelling house which was thereby burnt and consumed; and with arson of the same dwelling house by wilfully and maliciously setting fire thereto.

The scene of the alleged crime was a farm house in the open country. It was claimed on the part of the state that the defendant set fire directly both to the house and barn, and that his statement, made at the time to neighbors who came to the fire, that the house caught from the barn, was untrue.

It was in proof and not controverted that at the time of the fire the wind was blowing fresh and strong from the south-west; that it had been snowing for some three hours; that no water or snow was used on the fire, and that the buildings were all of wood; that the fire broke out in the barn nearest the house, and north-easterly from it (the distance from the corner of the house to the corner of the barn being twenty-six and a half feet,) that the fire had made some progress when discovered, which was before any fire was discovered in the house, the ell of which was found to be on fire on the inside a very short time after fire was seen in the barn.

The defendant called witnesses long connected with the fire department of the city of Portland to whom he presented a plan of the buildings, and after stating the distances between them, the materials of which they were constructed, the direction of the wind, the state of the weather, and the fact that no water was used upon the fire, he inquired whether or not in their opinion the dwelling house and connected buildings would take fire from the barn; whether or not it is a common occurrence for fire to be communicated from leeward to windward across a space greater than twenty-six feet; whether or not in their experience large wooden buildings, or large fires make their own currents, frequently eddying against the prevailing wind.

The testimony was excluded, and this exclusion is the basis of the exception principally relied on by the defendant.

We do not think it can be sustained.

The general rule which confines the testimony in a case on trial to the proof of facts pertinent to the issue, is too wholesome to be impaired by the multiplication of exceptions which open the way to proof of men's opinions, and facts of remote, uncertain and questionable import, unless it is very clear that the principle upon which those exceptions are supported has been violated.

Any one who has listened to the " vain babbling and oppositions of science falsely so called," which swell the record of the testimony of experts when the hopes of a party depend rather upon mystification than enlightenment, will see the wisdom of the rule, and look carefully to the legitimacy of any exceptions that may be offered.

The principle upon which such exceptions rest is well discussed by Shaw, C. J., in N. E. Glass Co. v. Lovell, 7 Cush. 319.

In the class of cases where the opinion of a witness is competent evidence, it becomes so not because the witness may be supposed, when compared with the jury, to possess superior powers of perception, intuition and judgment, or superior ability to draw correct inferences from proved facts; but because the nature of the question at issue is such that men of ordinary experience and intelligence must be supposed to be incapable of drawing...