Hall v. State

159 N.E. 420, 199 Ind. 592, 1928 Ind. LEXIS 2
CourtIndiana Supreme Court
DecidedJanuary 6, 1928
DocketNo. 25,337.
StatusPublished
Cited by31 cases

This text of 159 N.E. 420 (Hall v. State) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Indiana Supreme Court primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
Hall v. State, 159 N.E. 420, 199 Ind. 592, 1928 Ind. LEXIS 2 (Ind. 1928).

Opinion

Martin, J.

Appellant was indicted jointly with one Thomas O’Brien, alias Thomas Young, in three counts, the second of which charged the crime of murder while engaged in the perpetration of robbery. Appellant was tried separately by a jury which returned a verdict of guilty upon the second count of the indictment and fixed his punishment at death. Upon the verdict the court pronounced the judgment from which this appeal is taken.

The overruling of appellant’s motion for a new trial is assigned as error. Sixty-seven reasons in support of this motion are given, those relied upon here for reversal are: that the verdict is contrary to law and is not sustained by sufficient evidence, that the court erred in compelling appellant to be shackled with leg irons during the trial, and that the court erred in admitting and ex- *596 eluding certain evidence, which will be hereinafter considered.

The appellant introduced no evidence at the trial. The facts shown by the state’s witnesses are briefly as follows: The deceased, Louis C. Kreidler, who operated a drug store in South Bend, went to a bank at 9 a. m. Monday, March 26, 1926, to get money to cash checks at his store for employees of the Studebaker Corporation. At 9:15 a. m., just before Kreidler returned, the appellant Hall, who at the time was twenty-one years old, and O’Brien "held up” the drug store. Hall entered first and, at the point of a revolver, compelled Royal Gould, a young drug clerk, and Elva Collins, a customer, to hold up their hands and go into a back room, saying twice, "Get into the back room before I blow your head off.” There he went through their pockets and robbed them, taking from Gould a small 25 caliber automatic pistol, as well as his money.

O’Brien entered the store after Hall, and proceeded to rifle a cash register. William B. Shaffer, another customer, came in, and mistaking O’Brien, who was at the cash register back of the soda fountain, for a clerk, asked for a bottle of ink. O’Brien compelled Shaffer to go into the back room, saying, "Get into the back room or I’ll shoot you full of holes.”

Mr. Kreidler, returning to the store and seeing O’Brien, said, "What are you doing in that office?” O’Brien said, "Get in the back room with the rest of them.” A scuffle and fall ensued, a gun snapped but did not fire, O’Brien called to Hall: "Come and help me.” Hall backed out of the room where, at the point of a revolver, he was holding Gould, Collins and Shaffer and joined O’Brien.

Witnesses heard a scuffling, blows being struck, “something like a chair falling over” or “like somebody had broken a box.” Witness Shaffer, from the back *597 room, saw a motion at arms length toward Kreidler, who was almost down, by “the man who had been in the rear of the store’ ’ and ‘ ‘heard an awful crack’ ’ twice. Witness Collins said he then saw Hall open the cash register in the front part of the store (on the cigar counter) and take money. The witness then heard sounds of the men running out of the store. Mr. Kreidler jumped up and followed the men out into the street calling, “Hold up” or “Robbers” and “Help.” Kreidler had two or three wounds on-his head and over his eye and bled profusely, one witness said he looked like someone had thrown a bucket of blood over his head. Dr. Walter H. Baker, a duly licensed physician, fifty years of age, was called and arrived in about ten minutes and attended Mr.. Kreidler. Dr. Baker cleansed the wounds on Kreidler’s head, put on an antiseptic dressing, sent him home, a half-mile distant, in an automobile and put him to bed. Thereafter he attended him every day. About five days after the robbery, Kreidler began to run a fever and the doctor found pus in his urine. He had swellings in his left foot, left great toe and right ankle, chills, sweats and a toxic appearance indicating a streptococcic septicaemia or blood poisoning, which had developed from the injury to his skull. Dr. Baker gave a saline injection,- supplied water and packs to his head to increase the drainage from the wound and requested Dr. Harry L. Cooper, a licensed physician, who was a university graduate with a hospital interne experience and three years practice of medicine, specializing in internal medicine, as a medical consultant to assist in the treatment of Mr. Kreidler. Kreidler was removed to a hospital on April 3, was given a large amount of saline or sa.'t solution and an intravenous injection of gentian violet and some asperin. At the hospital, he sank rft'idly. The loss of blood at the time he was wounded rMuced the vitality of Kreidler, who was fifty-two years *598 old, and reduced his power of resistance against the blood infection. There was an increase of temperature, which was down and up, to 106 degrees. He developed paralytic ileus or paralysis of the bowels and had acute suppression of the urine, caused by profound toxemia or blood poisoning. He died on April 5, 1926.

Dr. Charles B. Crumpacker, a licensed physician and surgeon, graduate of several medical colleges, who had practiced medicine for .twenty-one years, and had been coroner for six years, examined the body of Mr. Kreidler after his death and with Dr. M. W. Lyon, licensed physician and pathologist, with an army and hospital experience and ten years practice of pathology, and Dr. .Harry L. Cooper performed or directed a post mortem operation, after the body had been treated by the undertakers. As coroner, Dr. Crumpacker reported the death as being caused by blood poisoning following a fractured skull, i. e., meningitis, inflammation of the brain or blood poison caused by some micro-organism or germ which produced a general infection of the entire body.

Dr. Cooper stated that in his opinion the man died from an infected fracture of the skull causing inflammation of the thin covering of the brain — the meninges. The fracture of the skull was circular in shape and about the size of half a dollar. Both layers of the right frontal bone, the inner and outer tables, and the porous structure between the tables were fractured, the inner break being larger than the outer. The fracture could not be noticed from observation, but would have been disclosed by an X-ray.

Mr. Kreidler was not rendered unconscious at the time Hall wounded him. Dr. Baker testified that he noticed no pus formation in or around the wound afld diagnosed the case as trauma of the skull, and neither Dr. Baker nor Dr. Cooper discovered that the skull vMs fractured until after the post mortem. X

*599 In addition to the positive identification of appellant by the two men (Gould and Collins) whom he held up and robbed in the back room of the store, there were other items of corroborating evidence, one of which was as follows:

After the robbery and assault on Mr. Kreidler, three pieces of the rubber grips of a revolver, one piece of which had the corner broken off, together with Kreidler’s spectacles were picked up from the drug-store floor. When Hall and O’Brien were arrested, May 10. 1926, in the company of “Red” Prough, who admitted a long criminal and prison record, they had, in their automobile, shoes and dresses and a black leather Boston bag which contained, among other things, wrenches, chisels, a jimmy, three flash lights, ammunition, a large Colt’s revolver and two smaller revolvers.

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Bluebook (online)
159 N.E. 420, 199 Ind. 592, 1928 Ind. LEXIS 2, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/hall-v-state-ind-1928.