State v. Cushenberry

56 S.W. 737, 157 Mo. 168, 1900 Mo. LEXIS 19
CourtSupreme Court of Missouri
DecidedJune 12, 1900
StatusPublished
Cited by37 cases

This text of 56 S.W. 737 (State v. Cushenberry) 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. Cushenberry, 56 S.W. 737, 157 Mo. 168, 1900 Mo. LEXIS 19 (Mo. 1900).

Opinion

SHERWOOD, J.

This appeal comes here because defendant, a negro, was found guilty of murdering George H. Leonard, the marshal of Cameron, on the morning of March 16, 1898, by shooting him to'death with a pistol, and sentenced to be hanged for that crime.

The circumstances attendant on the murder are, in outline, these:

A dwelling house had been burglariously entered on the night of the fifteenth of March, 1898, and from that house, Captain Beery’s, a pint bottle half full of California brandy had been stolen from the sideboard. When Captain Beery was aroused about two o’clock on the morning of the sixteenth of March, 1898, he got up, went down stairs, and found his house had been burglariously entered and the bottle of brandy stolen from the sideboard.

Ascertaining this, he immediately caused the marshal, [173]*173Leonard, to be telephoned the fact, and be being at home, put on his uniform, with a gray overcoat over it, and putting his revolver, with the scabbard on, into his pocket, went in pursuit of the burglar. He is next seen in the waiting room of the junction depot, with a kind of “brown colored darkey” under arrest. He took this darkey up to the ticket window and began searching him, and took from him a pair of shoes, and set them in the ticket window. Just then two other ne-groes came in at the south door of the depot; the marshal called to them and asked them where they were from, and where they were going, and then the negro under arrest started to run toward the north door of the depot, and ran up into the northwest corner of the waiting room, and the marshal after him. Then several shots were fired and the negro ran out of the south door with the marshal hanging onto him, and when the witness went through the ladies’ waiting room and around to the south door of the depot he found the marshal lying dead on the platform. This was about 3:20 in the morning. As to what occurred at the depot, this is the testimony of 'Wilfong, the telegraph- operator, who was there in the discharge of his duties. He also saw the two darkies who came into the south door and noticed that one of them had bad eyes, and that they had with them a mandolin and guitar box. On the next morning he recognized both of these negroes, when they were arrested, and then discovered that onfe of them, Charles Brooks, whom he thought the night-before had bad eyes, had lost an eye, and that his companion, Eli Reu-bens, had lost a part of his right hand. Wilfong fully identified these two negroes at the trial.

Charles Brooks, one of the two negroes who had the musical instruments with them at the junction depot, recognized defendant as the negro he saw the marshal have under arrest at the depot. He states that he and his “partner,” Eli Reu-bens, arrived from Ohillicothe at Cameron in a box car about [174]*174two or three o’clock on the morning of the sixteenth of March, 1898, and after sitting and talking in the box car awhile, went into the junction depot and there saw the marshal with a negro under arrest; that the marshal spoke up and asked him and Eeubens ii: they knew the prisoner, when Reubens answered he did not. Then the marshal said, “Come over here boys,” and they went over nearer to the marshal, and then the prisoner started like he was going out the door, and the marshal started after him. The prisoner crouched down in the corner, and the marshal stood over him and said, “Here, what are you up to,” then a shot was fired and Brooks and his partner ran; the latter ran first, and a white fellow ran out between Brooks and his partner. Brooks and his partner ran down the track, hid under a milk house, finally left there and went still .further down the track and built a fire, where they were arrested the next morning by two white men and taken back to Cameron and detained there until after the preliminary trial was over.

Brooks recognized defendant as the negro the marshal had arrested on that night, and when defendant was brought back to Clinton county and placed in jail, Brooks recognized him there as defendant peeped through the bars of the jail at him. Eli Reubens, Brook’s “partner,” aíso recognized defendant as being the same negro the marshal had under arrest that night and corroborates Brooks in every essential particular.-as to what then and there occurred. Reubens also recognized defendant and identified him in the jail in Topeka, Kansas, as being the same man arrested by the marshal. On this last occasion Reubens says he passed along by the cages in the jail and as he did so, defendant spoke to him from one of the cages, and says, “Hello, don’t I know you ?” Reubens says he replied:.“I told him, ‘Well, I don’t know, perhaps you might know me;’ ” and then Reubens gave defendant a chew of tobacco, as requested, and left the jail. [175]*175Eeubens bad previously seen defendant at Hannibal, Missouri, and had spoken to him on two occasions, at that place. After Eeubens had left the Topeka jail, as already stated, Lawson, deputy sheriff and keeper of the jail, says he asked defendant where that negro, referring to Eeubens, was from, whereupon defendant replied he was “from Cameron, Missouri, where that big marshal was from.”

And Lawson also testifies that defendant also stated at the same time, “I know that G-d d-d negro.”

H. O. Stewart, a white man, also corroborates the statements of Wilfong, Brooks and Eeubens in several and most of the essential particulars. Stewart, who resides, and then resided in Cameron, testified that he was in the junction de>-pot on the night of March 15, 1898, and fell asleep; he had been asleep some hours, when he was awakened by the marshal and his prisoner passing in front of him. They walked over to the ticket window and stopped there, when the marshal began searching the prisoner, and took a pair of shoes out of his pockets, and also a bottle of something out of his pockets, and set them in the window. He says, also, that the marshal took something off the prisoner’s neck; what it was, he doesn’t know. Just then two negroes came in at the south door. Leonard turned around and began talking to them; and Stewart also turned around and looked at them, his attention being attracted to them. At this juncture the prisoner made a movement and went over into the corner with the marshal right after him, when two shots were fired, when Stewart went into the lunch counter, and when he came out, Leonard lay on the sidewalk dead, and his overcoat was afire. Stewart identifies the two negroes he saw there that night, as Brooks and Eeubens, and is of the opinion that the marshal’s prisoner is the defendant, although he can not swear positively that he is the same man.

Upon an autopsy being held on the body of Leonard, he [176]*176was found to be sliot through the breast, a fatal wound, and shot also through the leg above the knee. These wounds were inflicted by a pistol of the same calibre as that the marshal had when he left home on that fatal night. The scabbard of his pistol was found on his person, as well as his watch and a lady’s open-faced, shell case, gold watch, enameled in color, and having attached a black cord with a slide on it; these things were returned to Mrs. Leonard with the body of her husband.

Wilfong, though he would not swear positively to the identity of the marshal’s prisoner with defendant, yet was of the opinion or impression or belief that they were the same person. ' The defense in this case was an alibi, the assertion being made on behalf of defendant that he was in Topeka, Kansas, on the day before and on the day of the murder and had never been in Missouri.

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Bluebook (online)
56 S.W. 737, 157 Mo. 168, 1900 Mo. LEXIS 19, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/state-v-cushenberry-mo-1900.