Thompson v. State of Missouri
| Decision Date | 31 May 1898 |
| Docket Number | No. 623,623 |
| Citation | 171 U.S. 380,18 S.Ct. 922,43 L.Ed. 204 |
| Parties | THOMPSON v. STATE OF MISSOURI |
| Court | U.S. Supreme Court |
Charles F. Joy and M. C. Early, for plaintiff in error.
E. C. Crow, for the State of Missouri.
The record suggests many questions of law, but the only one that may be considered by this court is whether the proceedings against the plaintiff in error were consistent with the provision in the constitution of the United States forbidding the states from passing ex post facto laws.
Thompson was indicted in the St. Louis criminal court, at its November term, 1894, for the murder in the first degree of one Joseph M. Cunningham, a sexton at one of the churches in the city of St. Louis. Having been tried and convicted of the offense charged, he prosecuted an appeal to the supreme court of Missouri, and by that court the judgment was reversed, and a new trial was ordered. State v. Thompson, 132 Mo. 301, 34 S. W. 31. At the second trial the accused was again convicted, and, a new trial having been denied, he prosecuted another appeal to the supreme court of the state. That court affirmed the last judgment, and the present appeal brings that judgment before us for re-examination. Id. (Mo. Sup.) 42 S. W. 949.
The evidence against the accused was entirely circumstantial in its nature. One of the issues of fact was as to the authorship of a certain prescription for strychnine, and of a certain letter addressed to the organist of the church, containing threatening language about the sexton. The theory of the prosecution was that the accused had obtained the strychnine specified in the prescription, and put it into food that he delivered or caused to be delivered to the deceased with intent to destroy his life. The accused denied that he wrote either the prescription or the letter to the organist, or that he had any connection with either of those writings. At the first trial certain letters written by him to his wife were admitted in evidence for the purpose of comparing them with the writing in the prescription and with the letter to the organist. h e supreme court of the state, upon the first appeal, held that it was error to admit in evidence for purposes of comparison the letters written by Thompson to his wife, and for that error the first judgment was reversed, and a new trial ordered. 132 Mo. 301, 324, 34 S. W. 31.
Subsequently, the general assembly of Missouri passed an act which became operative in July, 1895, providing that 'comparison of a disputed writing with any writing proved to the satisfaction of the judge to be genuine shall be permitted to be made by witnesses, and such writings and the evidence of witnesses respecting the same may be submitted to the court and jury as evidence of the genuineness or otherwise of the writing in dispute.' Laws Mo. 1895, p. 284.
This statute is in the very words of section 27 of the English common law procedure act of 1854 (17 & 18 Vict. c. 125); and by 28 Vict. c. 18, §§ 1, 8, the provisions of that act were extended to criminal cases.
At the second trial, which occurred in 1896, the letters written by the accused to his wife were again admitted in evidence, over his objection, for the purpose of comparing them with the order for strychnine and the letter to the organist. This action of the trial court was based upon the above statute of 1895.
The contention of the accused is that, as the letters to his wife were not, at the time of the commission of the alleged offense, admissible in evidence for the purpose of comparing them with other writings charged to be in his handwriting, the subsequent statute of Missouri changing this rule of evidence was ex post facto when applied to his case.
It is not to be denied that the position of the accused finds apparent support in the general language used in some opinions.
Mr. Justice Chase, in his classification of ex post facto laws in Calder v. Bull, 3 Dall. 386, 390, includes 'every law that alters the legal rules of evidence, and receives less or different testimony than the law required at the time of the commission of the offense in order to convict the offender.'
In Kring v. Missouri, 107 U. S. 221, 228, 232, 235, 2 Sup. Ct. 443, the question arose as to the validity of a statute of Missouri under which the accused was found guilty of the crime of murder in the first degree, and sentenced to be hanged. That case was tried several times, and was three times in the supreme court of the state. At the trial immediately preceding that last one Kring was allowed to plead guilty of murder in the second degree. The plea was accepted, and he was sentenced to imprisonment in the penitentiary for the term of 25 years. Having understood that upon this plea he was to be sentenced to imprisonment for only 10 years, he prosecuted an appeal, which resulted in a reversal of the judgment. At the last trial the court set aside the plea of guilty of murder in the second degree,—the accused having refused to withdraw it,—and, against his objection, ordered a plea of not guilty to be entered in his behalf. Under the latter plea he was tried, convicted, and sentenced to be hanged. By the law of Missouri at the time of the commission of Kring's offense, his conviction and sentence under the plea of guilty of murder in the second degree was an absolute acquittal of the charge of murder in the first degree. But, that law having been changed before the final trial occurred, Kring contended that the last statute, if applied to his case, would be within the prohibition of ex post facto laws. And that view was sustained by this court, four of its members dissenting.
In the opinion of the court in Kring's Case reference was made to the opinion of Mr. Justice Chase in Calder v. Bull, and also to the charge of the court to the jury in U. S. v. Hall, 2 Wash. C. C. 366, 373, Fed. Cas. No. 15,285. In the latter case Mr. Justice Washington said: 'An ex post facto law is one which, in its operation, makes that criminal or penal which was not so at the time the action was performed; or which increases the punishmen; or, in short, which, in relation to the offense or its consequences, alters the situation of a party to his disadvantage.' He added: 'If the enforcing law applies to this case, there can be no doubt that, so far as it takes away or impairs the defense which the law had provided the defendant at the time when the condition of this bond became forfeited, it is ex post facto and inoperative.' Considering the suggestion that the Missouri statute under which Kring was convicted only regulated procedure, Mr. Justice Miller, speaking for this court, said: In conclusion it was said: 'Tested by these criteria, the provision of the constitution of Missouri which denies to plaintiff in error the benefit which the previous law gave him of acquittal of the charge of murder in the first degree, on conviction of murder in the second degree, is, as to his case, an ex post facto law within the meaning of the constitution of the United States.'
A careful examination of the opinion in Kring v. Missouri shows that the judgment in that case proceeded on the ground that the change in the law of Missouri as to the effect...
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