State v. White
| Decision Date | 20 June 1940 |
| Parties | STATE v. WHITE. |
| Court | New Hampshire Supreme Court |
Transferred from Superior Court, Carroll County; James, Judge.
Ellen Louise White was convicted of arson, and she brings exceptions. Case transferred.
Exceptions overruled.
Two indictments for arson alleging offenses on September 24, 1938, which, with a third alleging a similar offense on September 22, 1938, were, without objection or exception, tried together by a jury after a view. Verdicts of guilty were returned on the indictments transferred and one of not guilty on the other.
The defendant objected and excepted to certain statements made by counsel for the state in his opening statement, and later objected and excepted to the admission of certain evidence. She also excepted to the denial of her motion made at the close of the state's evidence and renewed at the close of all the evidence that she be discharged, and to the denial of her motion that the verdicts of guilty be set aside as against the law, the evidence and the weight of the evidence.
The facts are stated in the opinion.
Transferred by James, J.
Thomas P. Cheney, Atty. Gen., Burnham B. Davis, Co. Sol., of Conway, and Frank R. Kenison, Asst. Atty. Gen., for the State.
Sullivan & Dolan and Thomas Dolan, all of Manchester, for defendant.
The defendant's motions that she be discharged and her motion that the verdicts be set aside raise the question of the sufficiency of the evidence to warrant the finding of her guilt beyond a reasonable doubt. They may conveniently be considered together.
The evidence is that the defendant, in 1925, purchased a small house and lot in Sandwich for the purpose of summer occupancy, and that every summer thereafter until the fires therein for which she was indicted, she so occupied it. During the first years of her occupancy she nade extensive repairs and alterations including papering and painting, repairing the roof, the removal of an old barn and the erection in its place of a detached two-stall garage, the installation of a water system and the re-grading and improvement of the grounds.
On September 19, 1938, she closed her house for the season and locked it, taking one set of keys with her and leaving, as she testified, the only other set in existence locked up inside the house. She drove her car to Manchester where she left it in a public garage and then went on to a hotel in Boston.
Late in the afternoon of September 22, one Joyce, who occasionally worked for the defendant and in whose general charge the premises were left during the defendant's absences from Sandwich, noticed smoke rising from the chimney of the house and seeping through the shingles on the roof. At the time he with his son was at work in the yard cutting up a large tree which had been felled by the high wind or hurricane of the evening before. There being no telephone service as a result of this storm, he asked a neighbor who chanced to pass in his car to find and notify the chief of the local fire department. The neighbor complied and the fire chief responded. When he arrived they examined the premises but could find no means of entry except by force. While making this examination they noticed through a cellar window sparks and fire falling from the ground floor into the cellar. The fire department was sent for and at once responded with its equipment, and Joyce, at the request of the fire chief, forced an entrance into the building through a ground floor window. The house was full of smoke but the fireman entered and easily extinguished a small fire found burning in a ground-floor closet. This fire was in some kerosene soaked excelsior, but due to lack of ventilation it had done little damage beside burning a hole in the floor through which had fallen the sparks and embers seen by the chief of the fire department. In another closet near by traces were found of another similar fire, but it had gone out by suffocation before doing anything more than smoke damage. After extinguishing the blaze and inspecting the premises for other fires, Joyce closed and fastened a door leading from the house onto the piazza, which had been opened by firemen in the course of their work, and replaced and nailed over it a storm door. The firemen and the crowd of spectators which had been attracted to the scene then dispersed.
Two days later on September 24, at some time betwen 10 and 11 o'clock in the evening, the testimony as to the exact time is conflicting, two more fires were discovered in the defendant's buildings. One was in some rags which had been soaked with kerosene and placed between the door and storm door which had been opened at the time of the previous fire, and the other was in a box of excelsior and other inflammable material in a corner of the garage. The firemen again responded and put out the fires before much damage had been done. Again they found the buildings securely locked and again they were compelled to force an entrance into the house, and this time into the garage also, in order to do their work. The storm door behind which there was fire was found securely fastened with nails and screws. The evidence was conflicting as to whether the door behind it was nailed or only fastened on the inside with its lock and bolt.
The evidence is also conflicting as to the movements of the defendant on September 22, and 24. The state introduced the testimony of several witnesses who said that they had seen her in her car in the vicinity of Sandwich on the 22d at or near the time when the fire occurred in her buildings on that date. She denies that she was anywhere in New Hampshire on that date, contending that she was in Boston all of that day and that during the afternoon and evening she was ill in her room in a hotel. She admits, however, that she was in Sandwich at her house on September 24 at the time when the fires on that date were discovered. She says that on that date she left Boston with a friend in the latter's car (the friend corroborates this), and drove to the Carpenter Hotel in Manchester arriving...
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