Synon v. People

• Decision Date: 20 February 1901
• Citation: 188 Ill. 609,59 N.E. 508
• Parties: SYNON v. PEOPLE.
• Court: Illinois Supreme Court

188 Ill. 609

59 N.E. 508

SYNON

v.PEOPLE.¹

Supreme Court of Illinois.

Feb. 20, 1901.

Appeal from criminal court, Cook county; Frank Baker, Judge.

Michael J. Synon was convicted of murder, and he appeals. Reversed.Thomas D. Knight and Gregory, Poppenhusen & McNab, for plaintiff in error.

E. C. Akin, Atty. Gen. (Charles S. Deneen, State's Atty., and Ben M. Smith, Asst. State's Atty., of counsel), for the People.

At the May term, 1900, of the criminal court of Cook county, Michael J. Synon, the plaintiff in error, was convicted of the murder of his wife, and sentenced to suffer the penalty of death. At a former term of this court a supersedeas was granted, and the case is now before the court for review on writ of error.

The plaintiff in error was a plasterer by trade, and resided, with his wife, Avrill E. Synon, and his son Michael H. Synon, a lad of 10 years, at No. 240 Green street, in the city of Chicago. He had another son, Robert, then upward of 26 years of age, who sometimes lived with his parents, but, as the evidence tended to prove, was at the time of the murder in the Cook County Hospital. The evidence also showed that a man by the name of Tom Smith had at the time of the murder been boardingin the family of Synon for about three weeks. The plaintiff in error was out of work, and was then earning nothing, except a small amount which he received from the plasterers' union, of which he was a member; but his wife earned and received money from sewing, and making mattesses filled with excelsior. The latter material she had piled up several feet high in a closet on the south side of the room used as a kitchen, near its southeast corner. The family lived on the second floor of the house,-a sort of flat; and there was access by a front door opening outward and facing west on Green street, and also by a back stairway leading up from the back yard along the rear or east end of the house to a porch on the north side of the kitchen. Besides the kitchen, there were two front rooms, which were furnished, and one of them had some furniture stored or piled in it.

The evidence shows that on Monday morning, February 26, 1900, there were in Synon's house himself, his son Michael, and said Tom Smith; that after breakfast Smith left the house at about 7 o'clock, and nothing more was shown concerning him. The boy, Michael, or Mickey, as he was sometimes called, left about 8 o'clock for the school which he was attending. He testified that, before he left, his father asked his mother for some money for car fare, and that she took a nickel from a brown pocket which she had tied around her, and gave it to him; that she had then in that pocket some paper money, wrapped up, to pay rent with that morning,-some bills, which she counted; that she kept the paper money in one corner of it, and some pennies and gold in the other. He further testified that his mother was well, and that there was no trouble that morning, before he left, between her and his father; that he came home from school at 12 o'clock; that he went up the back way, and found the door locked; that he looked in at the window of the kitchen from the back porch, and saw blood on the kitchen floor, dropped all around; that he did not see his mother; that he then went to a neighbor's on the next street to inquire about his mother, and then went back to school; that the teacher permitted him to go at 3 o'clock, when he returned home at once, his home being near, and found the kitchen door open, but could not find his mother, but saw that the blood on the floor had been covered over with newspapers; that he then went out and down to the street in front, and saw a hand rubbing the frost from the middle front window of their rooms, but could not see the person; that he then went again to the neighbor's and stayed there about half an hour, and then went back through the alley and met his father coming through the alley, and told him he could not find his mother; that his father said, ‘All right; come up to the house;’ that they went up on the kitchen porch, and his father said he would fix the fire, and gave him a hatchet to chop some wood, and said, ‘See if ma is around somewhere;’ that he (witness) chopped up a barrel, and half of another, and took up an armful of the wood, and saw his father was making a fire in the stove; that he went back and brought up the second load, and found the door shut, and he could not open it; that his father opened it and said, ‘She is hurt, with her eyes closed,’ and told him to bring up the rest of the wood, and he did so; that his father opened the door, and he saw his mother lying on the floor, with her head near the stove, and his father said she was dead, and witness went out on the porch and ‘hollered,’ and his father said, ‘It was not me; you need not say it was me, because it was not;’ that his father hollered, too, and told him to holler; that a crowd gathered, and in a few minutes the police came. He also testified that he asked his father about the blood on the floor; that his father knelt down and put his finger in it, and first said it was liver blood, but then said, ‘No; I don't know what it is.’

It further appeared from the evidence that when the police officers came they found the body stiff; that death had ensued seven or eight hours before; that the body was then lying with the head to the east, near the stove, so that, on opening the kitchen door from the porch, the door, when at right angles, struck the body about the knees; that plaintiff in error informed these officers that on coming home he found the body lying in the kitchen closet, covered up with the excelsior, with the head to the east and the feet out through the door, which was open, and that he picked it up in his arms and laid it down on the kitchen floor, gently letting the head down, resting on his left foot. Blood partly dried was found on the left leg of his trousers, near the foot, and on his left shoe, which fact he explained at the time, and as a witness on the stand, as above stated. A police officer noticed that Synon had something bulky in the left pocket of his coat, and asked him what it was, and Synon said it was his wife's money bag, and that he took it from the top of the bureau. He handed it to the officer, who found therein a 20-dollar gold coin, 54 pennies, some medals, nails, and an old coin, but no paper money. This money bag was the brown pocket described by the boy, Mickey, as the one in which his mother carried her money.

The deceased was a small woman, about 5 feet 3 inches high, and weighed 105 pounds. Her age was not shown. It was apparent that any one of her more severe injuries was sufficient to produce immediate death. Her skull on the left side had been crushed by repeated blows with some hard, blunt instrument, one of the wounds being a round hole in the head about the size of an ordinary hammer or blunt end of a hatchet; and there was a deep wound in the neck, cutting the cartilage to the larynx. The nose was cut through and broken, and there was a deep cut on the right side, extending from the forehead back to the right ear, besides superficial cuts. The second rib was fractured at each end, as if by violent blows upon the breastbone or upon the center of the rib. There were also bruises on her hands, indicating efforts on her part to protect herself. The coroner's physician testified that the skull was fractured in about 10 different places, extending from the frontal bone to the posterior part of the head, and that the brain oozed from the wounds. There was found a good deal of blood, covered up by the excelsior, at the west end of the closet, which had evidently come from Mrs. Synon's head and neck; showing that when her body was placed in the closet the head was to the west, and not to the east, as Synon testified he found it. A pair of shears used in the family was found hanging up near the closet, with blood and hair adhering to them; the hair corresponding to the hair clipped from the head of the deceased. There was also a hammer, a hatchet, and a small ax in the room, and there was testimony that the hammer appeared to have been wiped off with excelsior; but there remained a clot of blood where the wooden handle entered the eye of the hammer. The remains of the deceased were removed to the morgue, where they were photographed for identification, and Synon was taken in charge by the police. On his way to the police station, and after he was locked up, he was accused of the murder of his wife by different officers. Their testimony was, in substance: By one, that he asked Synon what he killed his wife for, and after the question was repeated he replied: ‘God knows I have got to suffer for it. You ain't.’ To another he exclaimed: ‘My darling! Some one killed my darling!’ Another, the inspector, came into the police office and said to Synon, ‘I want to know, you old villain, why you killed your wife,’ to which Synon at first made no reply, but after its repetition he said: ‘If you say so, I must have done it. I will have to suffer for it, not you.’

Mrs. Louise Smith testified that at the time of the murder she lived in the east part of the second house south of Synon's, and that about a quarter before 9 o'clock that morning she stepped out of her back door and heard a scream, and after she had gone a few steps in the yard heard another scream; that she thought it was in the direction of Synon's house, which was about 30 feet away, and which she could see, but did not know positively; that she knew the time, because her children went to school a few minutes after 8, and this was about half an hour afterwards, and she was getting ready to go north in the city. Mrs. Dora Silverman testified that she lived on the second floor of the house next south of Synon's, and was washing that Monday morning; that about 8 o'clock her children started to school, and from 10 to 30 minutes afterwards she heard a noise...