State v. Murray

110 P. 103, 83 Kan. 148, 1910 Kan. LEXIS 486
CourtSupreme Court of Kansas
DecidedJuly 9, 1910
DocketNo. 16,663
StatusPublished
Cited by16 cases

This text of 110 P. 103 (State v. Murray) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Supreme Court of Kansas primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
State v. Murray, 110 P. 103, 83 Kan. 148, 1910 Kan. LEXIS 486 (kan 1910).

Opinion

The opinion of the court was delivered by

Burch, J.:

The appellant was charged with assaulting and shooting Bert Graham on purpose, with malice aforethought and with intent to kill, under section 38 of the crimes act. He was convicted of assault with intent to commit manslaughter, under section 41 of the crimes act, and appeals. There are ninety-seven assignments of error, few of which are worthy of notice.

The appellant, who is a physician, became .suspicious of his wife. He went away leaving her under the impression that he would be gone several days, came home the same night, saw Graham enter the house by the kitchen door, rushed in, but was unable to effect a capture. His wife confessed in detail to a long siege Graham had made of her affections and her chastity, which, however, she had not surrendered. The appellant suffered the most poignant mental distress throughout the night, in the course of which he drank considerable whisky. The next morning he went to his [152]*152office, but could not free his mind of the night’s occurrences. Graham was a liveryman who made it a practice to meet incoming trains. Leaving his office and taking a revolver with him, the appellant went to the Rock Island depot, where a number of persons were waiting for the arrival of a south-bound train. Seeing Graham, the appellant began shooting. Graham seized a bystander, whom he attempted to hold between himself and the appellant. The appellant called to the bystander two or three times to get out of the way, and in the meantime refrained from shooting. Graham and the bystander struggled together and fell to the ground. Finally Graham ran, the appellant shooting at him and calling to him to stop. Altogether the appellant fired four shots, one of which caused a flesh wound in Graham’s arm. The defense to the action was that the appellant acted under the influence of an insane and uncontrollable impulse which relieved him of criminal responsibility.

The state’s evidence was quite brief, and consisted of the testimony of several witnesses who saw the encounter and of the doctor who dressed Graham’s arm. Graham’s- name was indorsed on the information as a witness, but he was not called. A motion by the appellant to require the state to examine Graham was properly denied. Every fact and circumstance necessary to establish the charges of the information was presented, and whatever the rule may be in some states it is not the law in this state that all witnesses whose names appear on the information must be called.

The appellant placed his wife, Rebecca Murray, on the witness stand in his defense. She gave a complete history of her relations with Graham, and of the occurrences of the night before the shooting, including the story she told her husband, and its effect upon his mind and conduct. There are numerous assignments of error relating to her examination and cross-examination which seem quite trivial. For example: One even[153]*153ing while the appellant was in Texas, Graham met Mrs. Murray on the street and asked to call that night. She said: “Oh, I’m scared to.” He said he thought it would be all right. She went home, and after reflecting on the matter made up her mind the meeting ought not to occur. Her testimony was that she thought: “He must not come here. This must not happen. I must do something to stop it.” Therefore she ordered a livery team and drove to her brother’s in the country. . After all this she was asked why she went to her brother’s that night. An objection to the question was sustained, and it is now argued that the verdict and judgment ought to be overturned because of the ruling. Again: She testified to salacious suggestions Graham made to her on a certain occasion. She was asked if she assented to them. An objection was properly sustained, because the question to be tried was the state of the appellant’s mind, and not her chastity. Afterward she testified fully to the fact that she had never yielded to Graham’s advances. Yet the appellant harks back to this question, irrelevant when asked and utterly immaterial now, and asks that the verdict and judgment be overturned because it was not answered.

The appellant was a witness in his own behalf. He was permitted to testify that he knew Graham was possessed of a licentious character. He said he had received information from Graham personally, and from others, respecting licentious conduct on the part of Graham with women other than the appellant’s wife, and he described fully the effect this information had upon his mind, in connection with the events of the night before the shooting. When he was asked to give the details of what Graham told him an objection was interposed and sustained. The ruling was clearly correct. The testimony he was allowed to give accounted fully for the state of his mind, the only matter at issue. It was enough, under the circumstances, that he possessed definite information from a reliable source that [154]*154Graham was a seducer of women. To have gone further woüld have introduced a brood of collateral issues wholly foreign to the. one under investigation. An offer to show by a woman that Graham had attempted to seduce her was properly excluded for the same reason.

The position of the state was that the appellant was altogether too deliberate, self-controlled and discriminating in his shooting to be under the influence of an insane passion, and in order to discredit the appellant’s account of what shattered his mental integrity the .state attempted to create a suspicion of an alibi for Graham. The appellant and his wife testified that Graham came at a certain time of the night. The appellant said the moon was shining, and he was corroborated by other testimony. In rebuttal the state offered in evidence an almanac showing the time the moon set. The almanac stated that its calculations were given in solar time. The almanac was properly admitted in evidence, but it is said the difference between solar time and the standard time in general use was not explained to the jury. The matter was one of common knowledge, and the appellant might have explained it to the jury himself, even in the argument of the case, had he thought about it at the trial.

Two witnesses, Isaac Mulford and Effie Mulford, gave accounts of Graham’s whereabouts until after ten o’clock of the night before the shooting. On cross-examination Mulford was asked concerning a subsequent conversation he had with Ellen Brewer. He admitted having the conversation, and admitted he might have said he saw Graham that night and might have talked about sitting on the porch at his home that night, but he would not declare he did so. Ellen Brewer was called by the appellant and asked to state all she remembered of the conversation with Mulford, which she did. The appellant then undertook to cross-examine her by means of leading questions, the answers to [155]*155which would not have impeached Mulford in view of the nature of his answers. Objections to such questions were properly sustained under well-known rules.

In the course of her testimony for the appellant Mrs. Murray stated that on a certain occasion she met Graham, by appointment, in North Topeka. Proceeding, she said:

“In the conversation that followed he asked me why I did not go to South Dakota and stay six months. I told him I had no reason to do that and he said he could give me a reason to do so. He stated that he knew some reasons and things about the doctor that would change my mind.

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Cite This Page — Counsel Stack

Bluebook (online)
110 P. 103, 83 Kan. 148, 1910 Kan. LEXIS 486, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/state-v-murray-kan-1910.