State v. Wong Si Sam

• Decision Date: 12 November 1912
• Citation: State v. Wong Si Sam, 63 Or. 266, 127 P. 683 (Or. 1912)
• Parties: STATE v. WONG SI SAM.
• Court: Oregon Supreme Court

127 P. 683

63 Or. 266

STATE v. WONG SI SAM.

Supreme Court of Oregon

November 12, 1912

Appeal from Circuit Court, Multnomah County; Henry E. McGinn, Judge.

Wong Si Sam was convicted of murder in the second degree, and he appeals. Reversed and remanded.

The defendant, Wong Si Sam, and one Low Soon, were indicted for the crime of murder in the first degree, charged with the killing of one Seid Wah Bing on the 20th day of December 1911, by striking him on the head with a hammer, and cutting his throat with a cleaver and razor. Wong Si Sam was tried separately and convicted of murder in the second degree. From a judgment and sentence of life imprisonment, he appeals.

The evidence produced at the trial tended to show the following facts: Seid Wah Bing, a young Chinese cannery man who worked during the fishing season at different canneries on the Columbia river and along the coast, returning to spend the winter months in Portland, was murdered in the rooms of Oi Sen, a Chinese woman, on the second floor of a building occupied by Chinese, in the city of Portland. For several months Seid Wah Bing and Oi Sen had been living together though they were not married. The woman Oi Sen, and the defendants, Wong Si Sam and Low Soon, were all members of the Hop Sing Tong, a Chinese highbinders' society, of which Low Soon was president. Seid Wah Bing, who was not a member of this society, had incurred the enmity of these men to such an extent that they had threatened to take his life. Wong Si Sam, who was employed at times as second cook on board steamships plying between Portland and The Dalles, was also very friendly with the Chinese woman, and had a key to her rooms, where he resorted when he pleased. On the evening of December 19, 1911, Seid Wah Bing and Oi Sen attended a supper party given in the rooms of some Chinese cannery men two doors east of Oi Sen's rooms, in the same building, where Seid Wah Bing remained until after midnight of the 19th. As Oi Sen testified, on that evening Wong Si Sam and Low Soon came to her rooms and held some conversation. They told her that they were going to kill Seid Wah Bing. About 10 o'clock she left for the party, remaining there until after midnight, when, accompanied by Seid Wah Bing, she left for her rooms, telling him of the proposed threat. When they opened the door of her room, they were confronted by the defendants Wong Si Sam and Low Soon, who immediately began to quarrel with Seid Wah Bing, offering to fight him and threatening to do him violence. After the quarrel had continued for about an hour they began to fight. Low Soon struck Seid Wah Bing with a small hatchet, knocking him down upon the bed, whereupon Wong Si Sam picked up a large meat cleaver, and cut the victim's throat, slashing his face to the bone with a razor which he drew from his pocket, and killing him. According to the story of Oi Sen, she stood by offered no resistance, and called for no help. The two men admonished her to make no outcry, and not to reveal their crime, under a threat of similar punishment. They then sent her across the street to the rooms of Wong Si Sam, where she remained during the rest of the night. Wong Si Sam and Low Soon then dismembered the body of their victim, cutting it into four pieces, and placing it in a trunk found in the woman's rooms, covering the remains with a layer of salt. The next day they directed Oi Sen to get an expressman to remove the trunk, and gave her money for a ticket to have the trunk and contents shipped to Seattle, Wash., which she did. The woman remained in concealment with the defendant Wong Si Sam, her own rooms being abandoned and locked up, until three or four days later, when the defendant took her to The Dalles on the steamer Bailey Gatzert, upon which he was working. She remained there a short time, and was then sent by Wong Si Sam to Billings, Mont., where she was subsequently found by the police and brought back to Portland. The police had in the meantime discovered the body in the trunk at Seattle, where the remains were identified as those of Seid Wah Bing. Oi Sen described the hammer with which Low Soon struck Seid Wah Bing, and the razor and cleaver with which Wong Si Sam slashed the face and throat of decedent. Thereafter the police searched the rooms of Wong Si Sam where they found all the furniture that had formerly been in the woman's rooms concealed and stored away. They also found the hammer hidden in the bed of Wong Si Sam, and the razor which the woman identified as being the one used by him at the murder. When found, the entire edge of the razor was roughened and nicked as though it had been drawn across some hard substance. It was admitted by defendant Wong Si Sam that this was his razor. Oi Sen told the entire story to the officials, and as a witness for the state gave evidence in detail of the above facts. Oi Sen testified that, when she got down to the depot to ship the trunk, both Wong Si Sam and Low Soon were there. No other witness testified to this, or to having seen either Wong Si Sam or Low Soon in any part of the building, where the crime was committed, at the time mentioned in the testimony of Oi Sen. It was proven by evidence other than that of Oi Sen, and admitted by defendant, that the woman did go to The Dalles on the Bailey Gatzert December 25th, and that she spent most of her time in the room occupied by Wong Si Sam and the head cook as a sleeping apartment. It was in evidence that, when defendant was first arrested and brought into the presence of Oi Sen, he denied any knowledge of the woman, or acquaintance with her.

C.W Fulton, of Portland, for appellant.

J.J. Fitzgerald and John F. Logan, both of Portland (George J. Cameron, Dist. Atty., of Portland, on the brief), for the State.

BEAN J. (after stating the facts as above).

Defendant's counsel first assigns as error the court's instruction to the jury over his objection and exception, as follows "Section 16 of article 1 of the Constitution of Oregon provides that in all criminal cases the jury shall have the right to determine the law and the facts, under the direction of the court as to the law. *** The Supreme Court, however, has decided that in criminal cases the jury are to have the legal and constitutional right to pass upon the law as well as upon the facts. They are under moral obligation, however, to accept the law as the court gives it to them, and that moral obligation requires that they should accept it as it is delivered to them by the court unless they can feel upon their consciences they know the law better than the court does, in which event they are the judges of the law and the fact, and are under no obligation to take it from the court whatever." In State v. Reed, 52 Or. 377, at page 388, 97 P. 627, at page 631, this court said: "It was the duty of the court to instruct the jury as to the law, and the duty of the jury to apply the facts found by it to the law as given it by the court." In State v. Walton, 53 Or. 557, at page 565, 99 P. 431, at page 434, the following is stated by this court: "The verdict of a jury in a criminal case necessarily includes both law and fact, and it is therefore within its power to determine the law as well as the facts; but it has no legal right to do so. The jury are required to find the law and the facts, 'under the direction of the court, as to the law,' *** and should receive and accept the law as given by the court, and not assume to decide it for themselves." In a later case ( State v. Daley, 54 Or. 514, at page 522, 103 P. 502, at page 505), after reviewing the constitutional provisions, this court said: "The instructions given at the trial of a criminal action relating to the questions of law involved ought to bind the consciences of the jurors, prompting them to return a just verdict, though a defendant might be found guilty; and, while the jurors possess the power referred to, they have not the moral right to disregard the directions of the court as to the law. In the trial of a criminal case, the jury in determining the guilt or...