State v. Wheaton

• Decision Date: 13 March 1920
• Docket Number: No. 21858.,21858.
• Citation: 221 S.W. 26
• Parties: STATE v. WHEATON
• Court: Missouri Supreme Court

221 S.W. 26

STATE v. WHEATON

No. 21858.

Supreme Court of Missouri, Division No. 2.

March 13, 1920.

Appeal from Circuit Court, Stoddard County; E. P. Dorris, Special Judge.

Lawrence Wheaton was convicted of murder in the second degree, and he appeals. Reversed and remanded.

J. L. Fort, of Dexter, for appellant. Frank W. McAllister, Atty. Gen., and Clarence P. Le Mire, Asst. Atty. Gen., for the State.

WALKER, J.

The appellant was charged, by information in the circuit court of Stoddard county, with murder in the first degree in having on the 30th day of August, 1917, killed his mother. Upon a trial he was convicted of murder in the second degree, and. his punishment assessed at 10 years' imprisonment in the penitentiary. From this judgment he appeals.

At the time of the homicide the deceased, Mrs. Wheaton, a widow about 61 years of age, her son, the appellant, 32 years of age, and a boy named Alonzo Case, about 15 years of age, lived together on the farm of the deceased about six miles south of Bloomfield in Stoddard county. On the morning of the day the homicide is alleged to have been committed the deceased, the appellant, and the boy ate breakfast together, and the latter started to a school he was attending in the neighborhood. The appellant says that he gathered some peaches that morning for his mother to can, and then went to his own farm, a quarter or a half mile distant, to cut weeds along a fence row; that he returned to the house about 12 o'clock m., ate dinner with his mother, and resumed his work at about 1:30 o'clock p. in. While thus engaged, between 4 and 5 o'clock p. m., the Case boy telephoned a Mrs. Jackson, who lived near at hand, asking if the appellant was there. She answered him in the affirmative, and the boy said, "Tell him to come home at once; Mrs. Wheaton is missing, the house is all torn up, and her pocketbook is lying on the floor." She informed appellant, and as he started homewards she said to him, "Do you have any idea what is the matter?" and he said, "No; I don't know." A short time thereafter he telephoned Mrs. Jackson that the house was all torn up, his mother was gone, and he could not find her. Soon thereafter neighbors began to arrive on the scene in response in the first instance to a telephone call from the Case boy. The Wheaton home consisted of a three-room house located about 300 feet from the public road, and a like distance from a railroad line which ran, relatively to the house, in a northeasterly and southwesterly direction, cutting off a portion of a garden plot of about a half an acre adjacent to the house lot or yard. Upon the arrival of the neighbors they found the household furniture in much disorder. The bedding was thrown or had been partially dragged off of the bedsteads, dresser drawers were drawn out, and the contents scattered over the floor. In the dining room and kitchen, consisting of one room, there were some dishes on a table, indicating by their unwashed condition that two persons had eaten there. Two or three broken plates were on the floor, and the drawers of a cabinet were drawn out and some of them were on the floor. On the kitchen table were several cans of fruit. On the porch was a pan containing some peeled peaches and a small paring knife. A bucket near at hand contained two gallons or more of unpeeled peaches. Appellant said that when he left in the morning his mother was peeling peaches on the porch. Witnesses stated that they heard the appellant say that he had told the Case boy when the latter started to school the morning before the homicide, if he wanted him for anything to call him at Jackson's. A washing of clothes was hanging on a line, and some tubs of water stood in the yard, indicating that they had been used in the washing. The appellant stated to the first neighbors who arrived that he did not know where his mother was; that the house had been robbed and she was gone; that she never left home without locking the doors and going in a buggy, and that it and all the horses were there; that the last time he saw her was " at about 1 o'clock that day, when he started to his work, and that she was at the time in the house. The search for Mrs. Wheaton was fruitless until a neighbor who, with his son, was approaching the premises from the railroad track or east side of the garden, discovered her body lying a short distance inside of the garden fence, about 250 feet from the house. It was lying on the left side, and near it was a wooden handle of a mowing blade called a sneed or snath. They did not attempt to enter the garden, which was inclosed with a wire fence, but went around to the house, where they found a number of neighbors, and notified appellant that they had found the body of his mother. He went out and looked at it, saying, "Ain't that awful," shed a few tears, and went back to the house. A subsequent examination of the body disclosed the following wounds: A cut on the right side of the head about two inches long, running obliquely from the forehead to the ear, and a wound about a half inch in length on the same side of the head, just behind the ear. Each of these wounds fractured the skull. Doctors testified that they might have been inflicted with one or separate blows, and that either was sufficient to cause instant death; that they were made with some blunt instrument, possibly the scythe handle or sneed found lying near the body. The" head of this handle was two or three inches in diameter at the large end, and the iron projections on same were found to fit into the wounds. When the body was turned over, some grass was found clutched in one of the hands, and some maggots fell from the under side of the head or face. There was no indication of a struggle. There were a few tracks near the body, which appeared to have been made by large rubber boots. Comparison indicated that none of these tracks were such as could have been made by Mrs. Wheaton. There was nothing to indicate that she had walked to the spot where her body was found. Upon the finding of the body it was determined to send for bloodhounds in an attempt to trail the murderer. This was done, and in the meantime the body was not removed from where it was found. The dogs were procured, and upon being taken to the body trailed around over the neighborhood for a time, and then went off in the direction of a town some 10 or 11 miles distant, where they lost the trail. They paid no attention to the appellant, although he went to them when they arrived, and went with the sheriff when they were taken to the body. The use of the dogs, uncertain under any circumstances, was in this case barren of results.

The statements and manner of the appellant not heretofore set forth are as follows: In a conversation with the sheriff soon after the body was found appellant said that he had told Lonnie Case that morning if anything happened to call him at Walter Jackson's. This fact was testified to by three witnesses. Appellant denied that he had made the statement, and he and the boy denied that such an instruction was given. Efforts by the city marshal to engage the appellant in conversation concerning the homicide the evening the body was found were unavailing; he manifested no emotion and refrained from any discussion of the subject. He did say that his mother had some money—a considerable amount in the house; that she was afraid of banks. The day following, upon a repetition of this statement to another witness, the latter inquired as to the amount she thus kept, to which he replied that it was probably $30 or $40; in addition he said that he had missed some smoking tobacco and his mother's pocketbook from the house. In a later conversation with the sheriff he said that there had been a tramp about the country three or four days before, and that he might have done the killing. Appellant's statements in regard thereto at the coroner's inquest held the next day were as follows:

"That an old tramp came into the field where he was working and said, `There's a mighty queer old lady that lives up there.' Appellant asked why, and the tramp told him that he had been talking to this old lady, and she told him that she always carried five, six, or seven hundred dollars in her clothes. The tramp further stated that if she was not careful some one would kill her for that money, or some such words."

The same story, in effect, was told by the appellant on the witness stand at the trial, except that the time of the conversation was stated to have been in the "July preceding the mother's death," instead of "three or four days prior thereto." Further, in regard to Mrs. Wheaton keeping "a right smart of money in the house" and on her person, appellant and the Case boy testified that it was her custom to keep some of it between the mattress and straw tick of her bed. None was found there, but on her body, pinned in the folds of her dress, there was found $287 in paper money.

The day after the funeral appellant stated to a witness, in a conversation concerning his mother's death, that "if I hadn't been where people could have seen me would have been in it." The evidence of the personal relations of Mrs. Wheaton and the appellant was as conflicting as that of experts testifying for opposing litigants. Certain witnesses characterized it as that usual between mother and son; others that they frequently quarreled violently, and at times, long prior to the homicide, he had offered her personal violence; others still that she was of an irascible temper, frequently nagged the appellant, but that usually he submitted without anger or reply.

It will be seen from the foregoing that the testimony relied upon by the state to secure a conviction was wholly circumstantial. Under the liberal latitude of the trial court's rulings, remoteness of declarations or accounts of occurrences constituted no bar to their admission in evidence. While a reasonable liberality in the admission of testimony...