The State v. Beard
| Decision Date | 12 February 1895 |
| Parties | The State v. Beard, Appellant |
| Court | Missouri Supreme Court |
Appeal from St. Louis Criminal Court. -- Hon. H. L. Edmunds, Judge.
(1) The indictment is sufficient. (2) The testimony sought to be elicited from the witness Hodges was rightly excluded. (3) The statements of defendant to officer Fugles were self-serving and incompetent. (4) The instructions given by the court fully covered the law of the case. (5) There is no merit in the claim of newly discovered evidence. ""State v. Duncan, 116 Mo. 388; ""State v. Welsor, 117 Mo. 570; ""State v. Campbell, 115 Mo. 391.
The defendant was indicted at the October term, 1891, of the St Louis criminal court, for the murder of Ashley Jones, on September 11, 1891. He was duly arraigned at said term and entered his plea of not guilty; was allowed a separate trial at the January term, 1892, and, after a number of continuances of the cause, he was put upon his trial at the October term, 1893, when he was convicted of manslaughter in the third degree, and his punishment assessed at three years' imprisonment in the penitentiary. Motions for new trial and in arrest were successively overruled, sentence pronounced, appeal allowed, and appellant admitted to bail, pending same, in the sum of $ 3,000.
Notwithstanding appellant's ability to give bail and employ counsel in the criminal court, he has filed no brief nor submitted any sort of argument in this case, and, under the statute, we have been compelled to read the entire transcript to ascertain if material or prejudicial error was committed against him.
The testimony on the part of the state tended to prove substantially the following: Early on the morning of the eleventh day of September, 1891, about 5 o'clock, deceased (who lived in Arkansas and was on a visit to the city), in company with three others, encountered the appellant and his codefendant on a public street. There had been no previous acquaintance between the two parties, and the conversation that ensued upon the encounter related entirely to drinking, and resulted in Beard and Bernard inviting the other four to drink with them. The invitation was accepted, and Beard and Brown conducted the other four to a saloon kept by one Brady, of which saloon they were habitues.
The party ranged in front of the bar, but nothing was said for a minute or so. Bernard stood first, next to him Beard, and then deceased. One of the invited party then remarked: "Who said come and take a drink?" and, there being no reply, continued: "Well, let's have a drink," and put some money on the counter, adding: "I think it is a nice way, though, to ask a man to take a drink and then have to pay for it yourself." As he made that remark, the appellant struck deceased on the side of the head with a baseball bat, felling him to the floor, raised the bat and struck another, when the three companions of deceased ran out of the saloon. After an ineffectual attempt to get an officer, they got a cab driver to go to the saloon and bring out the deceased; the latter at the time was unconscious and "limber as a rag," was driven to the city dispensary and thence to the city hospital. He never regained consciousness, but died on the thirteenth (two days later) at the hospital from compression of the brain, following a fracture of the base of the skull. Appellant and Bernard were arrested on the twelfth day of September (the day after the occurrence) at St. Charles.
At the close of the state's case, appellant "offered an instruction in the nature of a demurrer to the evidence," which was overruled, and exception saved. This instruction, however, does not appear in the record.
On behalf of the appellant there was testimony tending to show that his reputation for peace and quiet was good; that his occupation, when he had any, was that of a bartender; that on the morning of September 11 deceased and his three companions were standing on the corner of the street drinking from a bottle, and, as appellant and Bernard came by, invited the latter to join them in drinking from the bottle, which was declined, as they "were not drinking whisky." An invitation was then extended to Beard and Bernard to come round the "corner and drink anything you want," and the whole party went to Brady's saloon; drinks were ordered, and then a question arose as to who should pay for them; deceased said to the appellant: "You ordered them," and appellant answered: "I did not order them and I don't intend to pay for them;" with that deceased called him a liar and struck him full in the face; that deceased and his companions were all drunk and noisy, and indulged in talk of being "a hell of a man from Arkansas," and about "cleaning out places;" that Bernard got the bat to defend himself, and appellant took it away from him and struck one...
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