State v. Williams, 46976

• Decision Date: 11 May 1959
• Docket Number: No. 46976,No. 1,46976,1
• Citation: 323 S.W.2d 811
• Parties: STATE of Missouri, Respondent, v. Eddie WILLIAMS, Appellant
• Court: Missouri Supreme Court

Page 811

323 S.W.2d 811

STATE of Missouri, Respondent, v. Eddie WILLIAMS, Appellant.

No. 46976.

Supreme Court of Missouri, Division No. 1.

May 11, 1959.

Emanuel Williams, St. Louis, for appellant.

John M. Dalton, Atty. Gen., Hugh P. Williamson, Asst. Atty. Gen., for respondent.

HYDE, Presiding Judge.

Defendant was found guilty of murder in the second degree and has appealed from the judgment and sentence of 17 years in the penitentiary. The principal issue on appeal is whether the court erred in refusing to give an instruction on manslaughter.

Defendant was charged as an habitual criminal but this was not submitted to the jury. No brief has been filed by defendant, so we consider the assignments properly made in his motion for new trial. State v. Ulrich, Mo.Sup., 316 S.W.2d 537; State v. Stehlin, Mo.Sup., 312 S.W.2d 838. The only defense was insanity. Defendant did not testify but was present in the courtroom at all times. His first assignment combines several claims about his insanity defense, among them being claims that the verdict was against the weight of the evidence (which was for the trial court) and was the result of passion and prejudice, which we do not find to be shown by the record. It is also claimed that defendant thought the trial was to be a sanity hearing and not a trial on the merits so that he was taken by surprise and was unprepared for trial other than on the sanity issue. However, defendant was represented by a lawyer, there was an opening statement made by the State, and the State's evidence of the murder heard, followed by an opening statement by defendant's lawyer. No claims of surprise, and no such objections or requests for continuance, were made at the trial, which followed the usual course of a criminal trial with no issue shown concerning sanity until the defendant's expert witness was called. The record does indicate that the trial judge made considerable effort to bring out everything favorable to defendant, particularly in connection with his defense of insanity. The trial judge was in a much better position than we are to pass on the grounds contained in this assignment and he has overruled the motion for new trial. We cannot find any abuse of discretion in his action and, therefore, this assignment is overruled.

The State's evidence showed that Curtis Page and his wife, on their way to a moving picture theatre, stopped their car at a place where Page intended to get something for them to drink with sandwiches Mrs. Page was making. As she sat in the car making the sandwiches, while Page was inside the place to buy drinks, defendant came up to the side of the car and started molesting her, using profanity and talking about sex perversion. Mrs. Page turned her back and ignored him and thought he had gone across the street. Then she saw defendant entering the driver's side of the front seat, and he was 'saying the same things over again,' so she began 'banging on the horn' for her husband to come. Page rushed out and said, 'What are you doing annoying my wife?' Page and defendant started struggling; Page 'caught him in the collar and hit him;' they exchanged blows, struggling across the street, and when Page stood up Mrs. Page saw that he was bleeding. He collapsed before she could get to him and with the help of others she got him in the car and rushed him to the Homer G. Phillips Hospital, where the doctor who examined him found stab wounds. He died not long after his arrival there and an autopsy showed the cause of death to be a stab wound in the right ventricle of the heart. One of the policemen who arrested defendant the same evening said defendant had what appeared to be blood on his shirt; and that defendant said: 'I just cut a punk and I hope he dies.' Defendant had a black-handled pocket knife which he said 'was his knife and that he used it in the cutting.' Defendant later made substantially the same statement, as to his hope that Page would die, at the hospital, when he was taken there by the police. There was no evidence that Page had any weapon.

We have frequently held that when the evidence shows the defendant intentionally killed deceased with a deadly weapon that is sufficient to sustain a conviction of second degree murder. State v. Thomas, Mo.Sup., 309 S.W.2d 607, 609, and cases cited. We have also held 'that the existence or nonexistence of malice determines whether a homicide is murder in the second degree or manslaughter.' State v. Taylor, Mo.Sup., 309 S.W.2d 621, 623, and cases cited. 'Malice,' however, 'does not mean spite or ill will, but the intentional doing of a wrongful act without just cause or excuse.' State v. Ayers, Mo.Sup., 305 S.W.2d 484, 486, and cases cited. Concerning manslaughter, we have recently said: 'Malice is an essential ingredient of murder; and, although intentional, a homicide yet may be manslaughter, if without malice, as where one kills in a transport of sudden passion aroused by lawful provocation. * * * 'Neither words of reproach, how grievous soever, nor indecent provoking actions or gestures, however much calculated to excite indignation or arouse the passions, are sufficient to free the party killing from the guilt of murder. To have the effect to reduce the guilt of killing to the lower grade, the provocation must consist of personal violence.' * * * Violence to the person is the standard exacted by the law as affording the basis for the inference of that heat of passion which reduces the grade of the crime in a homicide case from murder to manslaughter.' State v. Taylor, Mo.Sup., 309 S.W.2d 621, 624. While not clear, it might reasonably be inferred that deceased struck the first blow, although there may have been some 'struggling' between the two before he did so. Nevertheless, the question is whether there was lawful provocation in view of defendant's actions toward Page's wife, which incited the use of force upon him to prevent...