State v. Baker

152 S.W. 46, 246 Mo. 357, 1912 Mo. LEXIS 190
CourtSupreme Court of Missouri
DecidedDecember 10, 1912
StatusPublished
Cited by13 cases

This text of 152 S.W. 46 (State v. Baker) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Supreme Court of Missouri primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
State v. Baker, 152 S.W. 46, 246 Mo. 357, 1912 Mo. LEXIS 190 (Mo. 1912).

Opinion

ROY, C.

Under an information charging murder in the first degree, the defendant was convicted of murder in the second degree and sentenced to fifteen years in the penitentiary, and has appealed.

The defense was insanity. The evidence for the State tended to show a strong case of “wine and woman.” Prior to his acquaintance with deceased, the defendant was an apparently prosperous contract- or and builder in Kansas City. He had a family consisting of a wife and three children, of whom a son and daughter were grown. The son was married and worked with the father. The two daughters were at home. Defendant was attached to his home and family. He lived in a house belonging to the wife. It was encumbered. About four years, before the trial he met Euby Hirsch, the deceased, who was about eighteen years old, and illicit relations between them began at once. He became infatuated with her, and, according to his statement, gave her forty or fifty dollars a month. When his bounty slackened, she threatened him that she would reveal the situation to his wife. She sued him for $8000 as damages for an assault. He had the house where she lived raided [361]*361by tbe police, and sbe was fined twenty-five dollars as an inmate of a bawdybonse. Tbe snit against bim was then dismissed for want of prosecntion. Tbeir rela-' tions continued. He became more and more addicted to liquor. His business, to a large extent, left bim, or was neglected. He borrowed small sums of money to satisfy her demands, and suspected her of using tbe money be gave her in keeping up other men. Sbe went on a visit to Topeka. He sent her ten dollars to pay her expenses borne. When sbe arrived in Kansas City, at bis request, sbe made an appointment to meet bim, and failed to keep it.

Tbe evidence for tbe State was to tbe effect that be corresponded with her through a saloon, and that on tbe night of tbe killing be put a pistol in'bis pocket, went by tbe saloon, got one or more drinks, and went to tbe flat occupied by Ruby Hirscb and her mother.

A witness, Emil Myer, testified that when defendant reached tbe Hirscb home, tbe witness bad been there about two hours, and bad gone into tbe bath room adjoining tbe front room, when tbe defendant called; that tbe bath room door was slightly open; and that tbe defendant, on coming into tbe front room, said to Ruby, “You done me dirty,” and sbe said, “No, I didn’t. Mama wanted me to stay here.” That defendant said, “Where’s that ten I sent you?” Sbe said, “If that is what you want, I will get that for you and you can go.” That then defendant pulled a pistol from bis pocket and fired at her five times. Sbe fell unconscious and was taken to tbe general hospital, where sbe died tbe following night of her wounds.

Tbe defendant, in. a statement made by bim tbe morning after tbe killing and while under arrest, said that be remembered putting tbe pistol in bis pocket and taking a drink at Riddle’s saloon tbe night before, but that be did not remember what occurred after that.

[362]*362The mother of Ruby Hirsch testified that she was on the hack porch and heard a shot fired and heard Ruby scream, then heard four more shots, and when witness got into the front room she saw Ruby lying on the floor and the defendant standing over her, pointing the pistol at her. She did not remember what was said by either her or the defendant. The witness ran out calling her other daughter and left defendant standing there. "When she got hack, the defendant was gone. About four o’clock the next morning, he passed across from the opposite side of the street to his house, barefoot and hatless, in his shirt sleeves, and was arrested by the officers who were waiting for him. His discarded clothing was found a few blocks away between the sidewalk and the street in the weeds which were mashed down and “looked like he had been wallowing around there.”

The defendant was born in Scotland county, Missouri, and lived there until about thirteen years of age, going with his family in 1878 to the vicinity of Phillipsburg, Kansas, where the family lived on a farm. He was badly afflicted with asthma until he left Missouri and had'frequent spells of suffocation on account of that affliction, and was known to wake at night and try to climb the walls of the room.- His asthma disappeared after he went to Kansas; but the evidence of his brothers and sisters showed that he had spells of melancholy, and was weak and unable to work for a large part of the time while in Kansas.

His mother, according to the evidence of the family and relations, was weak and nervous, and died of paralysis at the age of forty-six. By reason of the paralytic stroke she was bedridden for two years. She had asthma all her life and was a great sufferer from it. She had spells of smothering and of sick headache every few days. She would at some of those times say “you children don’t look right to me.” She was mentally all right when she did not have those choking [363]*363spells. "While in snch condition she was conscioiis bnt conld not talk. One of her sons, John, testified that she was nervons and had heart trouble and smothering spells in which she would pass away just like somebody dying, and would come to with a grip and jerking, with eyes set hack like a dead person, and her mind would wander, and she would say, ‘ ‘ This is not my home.” A nephew of hers testified that she was “weakly, nervous, excited and broke down.”

Defendant’s father died at about eighty years of age, having been paralyzed about seven years. One of his sons and a daughter testified that prior to his paralysis he was a robust, strong man. The daughter said that he had a fainting spell once while chopping sunflowers out of the corn.

The defendant had two sisters and three brothers who lived to he grown. All were afflicted with asthma in their childhood, the most of them getting better of it as time went by. Albert, one of the brothers, died at the age of forty, some of the witnesses saying that he died of asthma, and others that he died of consumption. John, another brother of defendant, lives in Oklahoma. He testified that he had one hard spell of asthma after going to Kansas and that it still affects his heart and that it appears like it is going to stop beating.

Another brother of defendant, "W. F. Baker, fifty-six years old, was a witness at the trial. • He suffers from asthma, but' appears to he otherwise in good health.

Two sisters of defendant testified by deposition. Both suffered from asthma. One got relief after moving to New Mexico. The other still suffers from it. She had spells or spasms until about fifteen years old. Since then she has spells with her heart and with asthma. She is very nervous. A nephew of defendant who is a son of his brother John, at the age of twenty-three had a spell of typhoid fever, with [364]*364complications of asthma, and was in the insane asylum of Oklahoma from September to April.

H. 0. Baker, a paternal uncle of defendant, lived to the age of eighty-eight. During the last five or six years of his life, his mind failed him, so that he would run away from his home, tear up his bedding, etc.

Prank Baker, an uncle of defendant, had two sons Marion and Wash who were shown to be poor business men, and who acted in a peculiar and erratic manner. George Baker, a grandson of Prank Baker, and a second cousin of defendant was an idiot.

Nancy Smith, a paternal aunt of defendant was adjudged insane in 1903 in the probate court of Scotland county.

Free access — add to your briefcase to read the full text and ask questions with AI

Related

State v. Oliver
572 S.W.2d 440 (Supreme Court of Missouri, 1978)
State v. Rhoden
243 S.W.2d 75 (Supreme Court of Missouri, 1951)
Steinbaum v. Wallace, Admr.
176 S.W.2d 683 (Missouri Court of Appeals, 1944)
State v. Dean
274 N.W. 817 (South Dakota Supreme Court, 1937)
State v. McKeever
101 S.W.2d 22 (Supreme Court of Missouri, 1936)
State v. Buckner
72 S.W.2d 73 (Supreme Court of Missouri, 1934)
State v. Warren
33 S.W.2d 125 (Supreme Court of Missouri, 1930)
State v. Langford
240 S.W. 167 (Supreme Court of Missouri, 1922)
State v. Tarwater
239 S.W. 480 (Supreme Court of Missouri, 1922)
Gill v. Sovereign Camp of the Woodmen of the World
209 Mo. App. 63 (Missouri Court of Appeals, 1922)
Gill v. W.O.W.
236 S.W. 1073 (Missouri Court of Appeals, 1922)
People v. Edgar
167 P. 891 (California Court of Appeal, 1917)
State v. Helton
164 S.W. 457 (Supreme Court of Missouri, 1914)

Cite This Page — Counsel Stack

Bluebook (online)
152 S.W. 46, 246 Mo. 357, 1912 Mo. LEXIS 190, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/state-v-baker-mo-1912.