People v. Horton

123 N.E.2d 609, 308 N.Y. 1
CourtNew York Court of Appeals
DecidedDecember 2, 1954
StatusPublished
Cited by30 cases

This text of 123 N.E.2d 609 (People v. Horton) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering New York Court of Appeals primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
People v. Horton, 123 N.E.2d 609, 308 N.Y. 1 (N.Y. 1954).

Opinions

Lewis, Ch. J.

At 4:30 in the morning of May 24, 1953, while Mr. and Mrs. Bay E. Horton were asleep at their home in the Town of Southport, Chemung County, New York, she was awakened by a cry from her husband — ‘ * There is a knife in me; put the light on. ’ ’ Failing to convince him that he was dreaming, Mrs. Horton turned on the light and observed him making an effort to raise himself from the bed with his right hand “twisted” behind his back. When, during that effort, she noticed he had slumped back and her closer observation had disclosed that his night clothing bore bloodstains and that a knife lay near his back, Mrs. Horton, by telephone, summoned local medical aid and notified the Sheriff’s office.

Bay E. Horton, while asleep, had suffered a stab wound in the back from which death resulted within an hour after his condition was discovered. His son, Norman, the defendant-appellant, now stands convicted of murder in the first degree upon an indictment which charged that “ * * * Norman L. Horton, in the Town of Southport, County of Chemung and State of New York, on or about the 24th day of May, 1953, willfully feloniously and of malice aforethought and from a deliberate and premeditated design to effect the death of Bay E. Horton, struck and killed Bay E. Horton with a knife, said act not being justifiable or excusable.”

At the trial of the indictment there was no proof that at the hour of the crime the defendant had been seen at or near his home; nor was there evidence of fingerprints which proved his presence there. There was evidence, however, that he had been seen at the college he was then attending — sixty miles from his home — at about 6:3Q in the evening preceding the crime, and that he was seen again in one of the college dormitories at about 7:00 on the following morning of May 24th, the day of the crime. Proof of what had occupied defendant’s time during the interval [6]*6thus unaccounted for — between 6:30 in the evening of May 23d and about 7:00 on the morning of May 24th— and of what the defendant ascribes as the reason for his return to his home during the interval of hours last mentioned above, appears of record in a detailed statement made by the defendant on June 27,1953, at a place and in circumstances presently to be described. In abbreviated form that statement is as follows:

At the time of the crime the defendant, then eighteen years of age, was about to complete his first year at college. The college year then drawing to a close had not been for him in any sense a success. His hope for fraternity membership had not been fulfilled; the friendships he had made in a few instances, and certain forms of misbehavior in which he had engaged and which he recognized as wrong, were not conducive to his being well regarded in the student body; his scholastic standing was at no time of a grade satisfactory to his father who did not withhold expressions of his disappointment in the young man — a continuation of an attitude amounting almost to scorn which the father had shown toward his son over a period of years. Thus it came about that on May 23, 1953, four days before the year’s final examinations, for which he was unprepared, the defendant was in a state of complete frustration — lonely, discouraged, with an attitude toward his father which through the years of misunderstanding between them had grown to deep hatred and in addition had finally led the son to regard his father as accountable for the plight in which he found himself. Baffled by the adverse circumstances then affecting him, and convinced that his father was accountable for his major failures, he concluded the best solution of his problem was to take his father’s life, and thus make it possible for him to reside with his mother, for whom he had a deep affection. With that project in mind and having been offered transportation in the car of an acquaintance, he left the college campus and reached the vicinity of his home about 10:30 on the night of Saturday, May 23d. After finding in his father’s garage a hammer and a pair of gloves — the gloves being necessary “ * * * because I knew they would be looking for fingerprints ” — he waited several hours until the light was out in his parents’ bedroom and the time arrived when the noise and whistle of a train due to pass nearby would muffle any noise he happened to make. When the train [7]*7whistle sounded — having previously removed his shoes — he entered the living room of the house by first forcing an outside French door and bracing it open with a white stone; then, with the hammer, he broke a lower pane in the inside French door and displaced enough glass to permit him to insert his hand, release the bolt and other door fastenings and to move back a davenport which stood inside against the door. Having thus effected an entrance, he seated himself in the living room for a period of about half an hour where he “ just sat and thought” and warmed himself after the chilling hours he had spent outside. He then went into the kitchen where he withdrew a knife from a box containing a carving set and slowly mounted the stairs leading to his parents ’ room. Upon opening the door and making his way carefully to his parents’ bedside, he stopped momentarily sensing that he was shaking “ * * * probably from fear ”, According to his statement I kept telling myself, You have got to do it. It is the only way out. It isn’t right but it is just circumstances that led me there and there is no way out.’ ” He then advanced to a position close to his father where, after another delay due to fright, he thrust the knife deep into his father’s back inflicting the wound which caused the latter’s death. The defendant then hurriedly left the bedroom, returning first to the kitchen where he restored the knife box to the place where it belonged, then to the dining room where he replaced a card table which had been moved. He then left the house by the door through which he had entered, retrieving the hammer he had used and his shoes as he fled. "While hitch-hiking ” his devious way back to the college campus he disposed of the gloves he had worn by throwing them into a field; the hammer he had used he threw into a creek.

Arriving at his dormitory room between 6:00 and 7:00 in the morning of May 24th, he had been there only a short time when there was relayed to him a telephone message informing him of his father’s death without mentioning the cause. Later in the day, while he was returning to his home with three friends of his family — who assumed his father’s death had been due to a heart attack — the defendant expressed to them surprise because, as he said, his father didn’t have a heart condition ”.

For a period of days after he returned home, the defendant was repeatedly questioned by State Police and members of the Dis[8]*8trict Attorney’s staff and on each occasion he denied complicity in, or knowledge of, the crime which had taken his father’s life. There came a time, however, when, after a finding by two physicians — licensed examiners in lunacy — that he was noncommitable to a State hospital, the defendant, with the consent of his mother and upon his own consent, was admitted at the Binghamton State Hospital as a volunteer patient. While there he. revealed to another voluntary patient with whom he had become acquainted, some of the details of his father’s death.

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Bluebook (online)
123 N.E.2d 609, 308 N.Y. 1, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/people-v-horton-ny-1954.