The State v. Saale
| Decision Date | 05 June 1925 |
| Docket Number | 26088 |
| Citation | 274 S.W. 393,308 Mo. 573 |
| Parties | THE STATE v. ANGIE SAALE, Appellant |
| Court | Missouri Supreme Court |
Appeal from St. Charles Circuit Court; Hon. Edgar B Woolfolk, Judge.
Affirmed.
Rufus L. Higginbotham for appellant.
(1) The accused was entitled to a fair and public trial. Sec. 22 Art. 2, Missouri Constitution; State v. Brooks, 92 Mo. 542. (2) All evidence introduced shall be relevant to the guilt or innocence of the accused. This rule is applied with considerable strictness in criminal proceedings. And the evidence offered by the prosecution should consist wholly of fact within the range and scope of the allegations in the information. Underhill on Criminal Evidence (2 Ed.) p. 178 sec. 97; State v. Moberly, 121 Mo. 604. (3) If the promise or threats were made by or in the presence of one in authority, or having control over the prisoner, and were such as might influence the prisoner, it is presumed that the confession afterwards made was induced by such threats and promises. State v. Jones, 171 Mo. 401. (a) If threats or promises, however slight, are used to induce confession, it is not admissible. State v. Brooks, 220 Mo. 74. (b) A confession procured by the statement, "You had better tell me all you know," was held inadmissible. Kelley's Criminal Law & Practice (3 Ed.) p. 234, sec. 283. (c) The confession alleged to have been procured in this case, being procured by such statements of Deputy Sheriff John Grothe, immediately after he arrested defendant and while she was in his charge and custody, and upon his making such statements as these to her: "Ora Thoele told us all about this" and "You just as well come on and tell us your part of it" and "It would be better for you to tell about it" and "I am an officer and it would be better for you to tell me about it" and "I know all about it any way" and "You just as well come across and tell all about it" was not a free and voluntary statement, and those statements made the confession inadmissible. State v. Jones, 171 Mo. 401; State v. Brooks, 220 Mo. 74; Kelley's Criminal Law & Practice (3 Ed.) p. 234, sec. 283.
Robert W. Otto, Attorney-General, and J. Henry Caruthers, Assistant Attorney-General, for respondent.
(1) Appellant complains that she was not accorded a fair public trial. This point is not well founded, since the record shows that all the seats and standing room in the court house were occupied with people. (2) The question of whether or not the confession of appellant was voluntary was properly submitted to the jury, and the jury found as a fact that it was voluntary. State v. Jones, 171 Mo. 405; State v. Brooks, 220 Mo. 83.
The appellant was charged by information in the Circuit Court of St. Charles County with an assault with intent to kill, and upon a trial was convicted and sentenced to fifteen years' imprisonment in the penitentiary. From that judgment she appeals.
Peter Saale, the husband of the appellant, was the victim of the assault. He and his wife lived on a farm in St. Charles County. Joseph Saale, the brother of Peter, lived alone in a house about five hundred feet from that occupied by Peter and his family, consisting of the appellant and their five children. Some time after eight o'clock on the night of January 30, 1924, Joseph heard some one moaning at Peter's house. Upon look-out he saw a light in one of Peter's windows and started over there, but the light was extinguished as he approached the house. Upon reaching the house he opened the door and saw the appellant sitting in the room alone. He asked her where Peter was, and she said he was down at the barn or the horse lot. The moaning continued and Joseph went out to ascertain from whence it came. He followed the sounds until he came to a well or cistern, and looking down into it he saw his brother Peter therein and found that the moans emanated from him. The well had two buckets, one at each end of a chain which ran over a pulley suspended from a supporting frame. These buckets had been pulled up out of the well and placed on each side of the rim or outer edge of the same. Joseph let down one of the buckets into the well and told Peter to take hold of the chain and he would draw him up. Peter hesitated to comply until he was assured that it was his brother who was offering to help him. He then took hold of the chain, and Joseph drew him up out of the well, carried him to his residence, put him to bed and summoned a physician, who, upon examining him, found contused wounds or bruises on his head, neck and shoulders. He finally recovered from his injuries.
A neighbor of the Saales, named Ora Thoele, who has been convicted as a participant in this crime and is now undergoing punishment for same, testified at appellant's trial that for some time before the assault he had been criminally intimate with the appellant; that she suggested at different times that they "do away with her husband;" that at their last meeting, the afternoon preceding the crime, she reached down in a buggy in which they were sitting, took up a pistol, handed it to the witness and told him to take it and kill her husband that night. He declined to take the weapon, and upon leaving her she insisted upon his coming to her home that night, and he consented to do so. He went there at about eight o'clock. She saw him approaching and motioned to him not to come in. About ten minutes thereafter she came out and insisted upon his doing away with her husband that night. He told her he would do the best he could. She suggested that he take a stick and hit him over the head, and then went back into the house. She came out twice thereafter to see if he was still there. The last time she came out she again told the witness to get a stick and she would tell Pete, her husband, to go to the barn, that something was wrong down there. Witness found a heavy stick, two and a half or three feet long and one or one and a half inches thick. He picked it up and went upon the porch and stood near the door. After he had been there a few minutes Peter came out, evidently to go to the barn at his wife's suggestion. Just as he was about to step off of the porch the witness took the club in both hands and struck him one or two blows over the head. He crumpled up or fell in a heap, with his face downward and the lower part of his body on the porch. The blows rendered him unconscious. Just as the witness struck Peter, the latter's wife, the appellant, came out of the door and said, "Let's put him down in the well." Witness and the appellant then carried Peter twenty-five or thirty feet to the well and threw him into it head foremost.
The doctor called to attend Peter the night his brother took him out of the well, stated that he found him unconscious and suffering profound shock, caused by bruises upon his head, neck and shoulders. He visited him daily during the succeeding week or ten days, much of which time he was in a semi-conscious condition, the blows he had received resulting in a concussion of the brain. That his sudden immersion in cold water, after having been rendered unconscious from the blows, probably produced a shock which caused him to regain consciousness sufficient to enable him to make the moans his brother had heard.
A witness named Groethe, one of the deputy sheriffs of St. Charles County, testified to a conversation he had with the appellant at the court house in the city of St. Charles some time in February succeeding the assault. After some preliminary conversation the witness asked the appellant to tell him about her husband being in the well; that she might as well tell the truth about it, that Thoele had told who helped him. Whereupon she said: She then proceeded to relate the circumstances under which the crime was committed. Her statement is in effect as follows: That she and Thoele plotted the crime on the porch of a neighbor, named Evans, the day of its commission; that she went home and about eight o'clock that night she went out of the house and saw Thoele standing near. She told him not to leave. She went out a second time and seeing Thoele still there again told him not to leave; that she went back into the house, and told her husband there was some trouble at the barn and that he had better go and see about the horses. That her husband started out and as he was about to step off of the porch Thoele struck him. She went and helped Thoele carry her husband to the well; that they took the buckets out, set them on either side of the well and threw her husband into it; that the taking of the buckets out of the well was to prevent her husband, if he came to, from catching hold of the chain to keep from drowning. She then went over to a clothes line and took a pole used for its support and gave it to Thoele to push her husband's body under the water and drown him if he was not dead. This witness then identified a long pole and a short heavy stick which appellant, in her statement to him, said were the ones that were used by Thoele as she had directed.
The testimony for the appellant was to this effect: that some time prior to the assault she was driving a horse hitched to a buggy towards St. Charles, and the horse ran away and she received injuries to her head and was taken to a hospital for treatment.
A doctor then testified that for several years prior to the assault he had treated the appellant professionally, and had seen her off-and-on since the date of that offense; that a recent examination had disclosed that she had a toxic goitre which causes nervousness, increased rapidity of heart action and a feeling of apprehension which might have affected her mind, but that so far...
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