Turner v. Commonwealth
| Decision Date | 06 May 1878 |
| Parties | Turner v. The Commonwealth. |
| Court | Pennsylvania Supreme Court |
Jan. 8 9, 1878.
1. The Court of " Oyer and Terminer" is a sufficient description of a court having jurisdiction of homicide cases and the omission of the words " and General Gaol Delivery," is of no legal significance and not a ground for reversal.
2. The Act of April 9th 1874, providing for the election of an additional law judge in the Twenty-fifth Judicial District is constitutional.
3. In a trial for murder evidence of the prisoner's illicit intercourse with the deceased is admissible, if such criminal conduct becomes in any way a link in the chain of circumstances which connects the prisoner with the murder.
4. It is erroneous to submit the general character of witnesses to a jury without previous evidence touching such character.
5. It was complained that the court permitted the jury to find a verdict against the prisoner upon a degree of proof less than that required by law in criminal cases. Held, that the instructions of the court, as herein contained, were all that the prisoner had a right to require.
6. The court instructed the jury that if the defendant proved an alibi it constituted a perfect defence, but if not proved and they did not think it had been proved the attempt to manufacture evidence was a circumstance which always bore against the person making it; that no innocent person is driven to manufacture evidence. Held ( the court below), that this instruction is manifestly wrong inasmuch as the jury are told that the defendant having undertaken to defend himself on the ground of alibi, must produce evidence sufficient to work his acquittal, or if not his failure is evidence of guilt. Held, further, that were the defendant detected in an attempt to corrupt witnesses or to manufacture evidence it would certainly weigh heavily against him, but his mere failure to prove a given part of his defence is no evidence of such attempt and ought not to have been submitted as such to the jury.
7. Where the case of the Commonwealth rests upon positive and undoubted proofs, it seems that like evidence of an alibi should be required, but where the case rests wholly upon circumstantial evidence, the evidence of the alibi, though not clear, should be submitted to the jury as matter of defence.
8. It seems that the burthen of proof never shifts, but rests on the prosecution throughout, and if, from all the evidence, a reasonable doubt of the defendant's guilt is raised, there should be an acquittal.
Before AGNEW, C. J., SHARSWOOD, MERCUR, GORDON, PAXSON, WOODWARD and TRUNKEY, JJ.
Error and certiorari to the Court of Oyer and Terminer and General Jail Delivery of Clearfield county: Of May Term 1878, Nos. 47 and 48. Certified from the Middle District.
Indictment of Martin V. Turner for the murder of Maria J. Waple. Defendant pleaded " Not guilty."
The indictment was drawn as follows:--
& c.
On behalf of the prisoner it was alleged that this indictment was fatally defective, inasmuch as it did not aver that the deceased was living when assaulted by the prisoner; and for the additional reason that it did not state the station, title or degree of the prisoner. 25th and 26th assignments of error.
The indictment when sent to the grand jury was endorsed " True bill," and the prisoner alleged that it could not be sustained, for it had not been found a true bill by the grand jury, the endorsement having been made by the District-Attorney before reaching them. 24th assignment.
At the trial, before Orvis, Additional Law Judge, it appeared that the deceased, Maria J. Waple, lived at Wallaceton, in Clearfield county, and was the divorced wife of Thomas J. Waple. About one o'clock on the 3d of November 1876, she started to visit her sister-in-law, Mrs. Jared Waple, who lived about two miles distant. No more was heard of her until the 8th of November, when her body was found in the woods about one hundred yards from the road leading to Jared Waple's, with one gun-shot wound in the body and another in the top of her head. Turner and the deceased had been seen at the gate of the house of the latter engaged in conversation on the day of the murder, shortly before the deceased had started for the house of her sister-in-law, and very soon after she started two shots were heard in quick succession from the direction she had taken and where her body was discovered. Turner, it was shown, left his house, a short distance from that of deceased, about one o'clock on the day of the murder. He arose from the dinner-table, went up stairs and started from his house with his gun. This gun had two barrels, one of which was rifled and the other a smooth-bore, and the wound in the body of deceased was apparently made by a rifle-ball and that in the head by buckshot. When the prisoner returned to his house in the evening both barrels of the gun were unloaded, and he remarked that he had been after squirrels and had had bad luck. When the search was made, the tracks of what appeared to be a man and woman were found in the vicinity of the body, and tracks which in size corresponded with those made by the shoes of Turner were found leading in the direction of the house of one Williams, about a mile and a half distant, where Mrs. Williams testified Turner came on the afternoon of the 3d of November, and that he had a gun in his hand.
The court permitted the Commonwealth to show that from 1869 to June 1876, there had been a criminal intimacy between the prisoner and the deceased, and that these relations ceased on the latter date, when there had been a quarrel between them.
The admission of this testimony was the 1st assignment of error.
In charging the jury, the court, commenting on this testimony, said: This portion of the charge constituted the ninth assignment.
The defendant called a number of witnesses to prove an alibi. There was evidence that the prisoner, after leaving the dinnertable, on the 3d of November, was engaged in making repairs to the roof of a house, until about half-past one o'clock; and the freight agent at the railroad office testified that the prisoner came to the station, between two and three o'clock, on the day of the murder, and assisted him in checking manifests for fifteen or twenty minutes; and, on cross-examination, the same witness said that Turner had several times called witness' attention to this fact. Other evidence in relation to the alibi will be found in the opinion of this court, in their discussion of the charge of the court below, with reference to the attempt of the prisoner to manufacture evidence.
The defendant offered to prove, by the constable who arrested him, that, on the night of November 11th 1876, he found him, about eight o'clock, at his father's house, in bed; that he told him he was there to arrest him for the murder of the deceased, and that defendant replied: " All right; I will go with you; I am innocent; " that he did not ask for a warrant, but accompanied the officer peaceably to the jail at Clearfield: this being offered to show absence of guilty fear, and that his conduct was consistent with that of innocence.
The admission of this evidence, under objection, was the second assignment.
To show the relations of the deceased toward Waple, her divorced husband, and to repel the presumption sought to be raised by the Commonwealth that the prisoner was the only person who had any jealousy or a grudge against the deceased, the defendant offered evidence to show that Waple, the husband of the deceased, returned from the penitentiary in May 1875, and came to the house owned and occupied by deceased; that, although divorced, they lived together as man and wife until September of that year, when they separated by reason of a quarrel between them; that Waple, the husband, then went to Woodland, a distance of some three miles from Wallaceton; that he was arrested for non-payment of the costs in the divorce proceedings, and confined in jail at Clearfield; that, while there, some time in the latter part of October 1876, he requested deceased to bail him out of jail, and she refused; that he got out of prison, and was seen in the house of Mrs. Waple, at Wallaceton, on Friday night of November 3d, and on the Saturday night following, at Wallaceton early on Sunday, and beyond Wallaceton before daylight Saturday morning.
David Quigley, one of de...
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