Swan v. Commonwealth

• Decision Date: 29 October 1883
• Citation: 104 Pa. 218
• Parties: Swan <I>versus</I> Commonwealth.
• Court: Pennsylvania Supreme Court

104 Pa. 218

Swan versus Commonwealth.

Supreme Court of Pennsylvania.

October 8, 1883.

October 29, 1883.

October 8th 1883.

Before GORDON, TRUNKEY, STERRETT, GREEN and CLARK, JJ. MERCUR, C. J., and PAXSON, J., absent

ERROR to the Quarter Sessions of Armstrong county: Of October and November Term 1883, No. 211.

David Barclay, for the plaintiff in error.

M. F. Leason, for the defendant in error.

Mr. Justice CLARK delivered the opinion of the court, October 29th 1883.

We are of opinion that there was error in the refusal of the court to limit the effect of the testimony of Ross Reynolds, Esq., and in allowing it to go to the jury to affect Charles Swan, the plaintiff in error.

Testimony had been received showing the perpetration of other similar crimes in the vicinity, at and about the same time Lynch had plead guilty to one of these, the Reynold's robbery, and the testimony was admitted "to throw what light" the jury might "discover from it, of the parties charged, composing or being a part of an organization, banded together for the purpose of committing crimes of the kind charged."

It is certainly true that in a criminal trial, evidence may be received of any one of a system of crimes, mutually dependent, but there must be a system established between the offence on trial, and that introduced, to connect it with the defendant: Hester v. Commonwealth, 4 Norris 139. To make one criminal act evidence of another, some connection must exist between them; that connection must be traced in the general design, purpose or plan of the defendant, or it may be shown by such circumstances of identification, as necessarily tends to establish that the person who committed one must have been guilty of the other. The collateral or extraneous offence must form a link in the chain of circumstances or proofs relied upon for conviction; as an isolated or disconnected fact it is of no consequence; a defendant cannot be convicted of the offence charged simply because he is guilty of another offence.

In the case of Goersen v. Commonwealth, 3 Out. 388, MERCUR, J., giving the result of all the cases upon the admissibility of such testimony, says: "Yet, under some circumstances, evidence of another offence by the defendant may be given. Thus, it may be to establish identity; to show the act charged was intentional and willful, not accidental; to prove motive; to show guilty knowledge and purpose, and to rebut any inference of mistake; in case of death by poison, to...