Source: https://www.legalcrystal.com/case/95744/shepard-vs-united-states
Timestamp: 2017-07-26 15:10:12
Document Index: 583266068

Matched Legal Cases: ['§ 1440', '§ 1442', '§ 1441', '§ 1445', '§ 1447', '§ 1726', '§ 1725', '§ 1730', '§ 1718', '§ 1722', '§ 1722']

Shepard Vs United States - Citation 95744 - Court Judgment | LegalCrystal
Save as PDF Add a Tag Add a Note Semantics Visualize Shepard Vs. United States - Court Judgment	LegalCrystal Citationlegalcrystal.com/95744CourtUS Supreme CourtDecided OnNov-06-1933Case Number290 U.S. 96AppellantShepardRespondentUnited StatesExcerpt:.....to the circuit court of appeals
1. to make out a dying declaration, the declarant must have spoken without hope of recovery and in the shadow of impending death, and this state of mind must be exhibited in the evidence, and not left to conjecture. p.
290 u. s. 99
2. on a trial for murder by poison, where the defense was suicide, a statement that deceased had made, accusing the defendant of having poisoned her, and which was offered and erroneously let in as a dying declaration so that it must have been considered by the jury as testimony to the act of poisoning, cannot be treated on appeal as properly in the case because, as evidence of the declarant's state of mind, it tended to rebut defensive evidence of suicidal..... Judgment:
Shepard v. United States - 290 U.S. 96 (1933)
2. On a trial for murder by poison, where the defense was suicide, a statement that deceased had made, accusing the defendant of having poisoned her, and which was offered and erroneously let in as a dying declaration so that it must have been considered by the jury as testimony to the act of poisoning, cannot be treated on appeal as properly in the case because, as evidence of the declarant's state of mind, it tended to rebut defensive evidence of suicidal intention. P.
290 U. S. 102
3. A trial may become unfair if testimony offered and erroneously accepted for one purpose is used in an appellate court as though admitted for a different purpose, unavowed and unsuspected. P.
290 U. S. 103
4. Evidence having a dual tendency, inadmissible and gravely prejudicial for one purpose but not objectionable for another if separately considered, should be excluded from the jury where the feat of ignoring it in the one aspect while considering it in the other is too subtle for the ordinary mind and the risk of confusion is so great as to upset the balance of practical advantage. P.
5. The declarations of deceased persons (short of dying declarations) which may be used to show their intentions for the future must be sharply distinguished from declarations of memory merely, and from those that recite the past conduct of other persons. P.
290 U. S. 106
62 F.2d 683; 64
641, reversed.
"You will get me well, won't you?" Fear or even belief that illness will end in death will not avail of itself to make a dying declaration. There must be "a settled hopeless expectation" (Willes, J. in
Reg. v. Peel,
2 F. & F. 21, 22) that death is near at hand, and what is said must have been spoken in the hush of its impending presence.
160 U. S. 553
164 U. S. 694
R. v. Perry,
[1909] 2 K.B. 697;
People v. Sarzano,
212 N.Y. 231, 235, 106 N.E. 87; 3 Wigmore on Evidence, §§ 1440, 1441, 1442, collating the decisions. Despair of recovery may indeed be gathered from the circumstances if the facts support the inference.
Carver v. United States, supra;
Wigmore, Evidence, § 1442. There is no unyielding ritual of words to be spoken by the dying. Despair may even be gathered, though the period of survival outruns the bounds of expectation. Wigmore, § 1441. What is decisive is the state of mind. Even so, the state of mind must be exhibited in the evidence, and not left to conjecture. The patient must have spoken with the consciousness of a swift and certain doom.
hope was still alive. Homicide may not be imputed to a defendant on the basis of mere suspicions, though they are the suspicions of the dying. To let the declaration in, the inference must be permissible that there was knowledge or the opportunity for knowledge as to the acts that are declared. Wigmore, § 1445(2). The argument is pressed upon us that knowledge and opportunity are excluded when the declaration in question is read in the setting of the circumstances. On the one side are such cases as
Berry v. States,
63 Ark. 382, 38 S.W. 1038;
State v. Wilks,
278 Mo. 481, 213 S.W. 118;
67 N.C. 12;
125 N.C. 712, 34 S.E. 648;
Shaw v. People,
3 Hun, 272; 63 N.Y. 36;
Stewart v. Commonwealth,
235 Ky. 670, 679, 32 S.W.2d 29, and
Commonwealth v. Griffith,
149 Ky. 405, 149 S.W. 825; on the other,
Shenkenberger v. State,
154 Ind. 630, 57 N.E. 519;
State v. Kuhn,
117 Iowa, 216, 228, 90 N.W. 733;
Fults v. State,
83 Tex.Cr.R. 602, 204 S.W. 108;
Cook v. State,
90 Tex.Cr.R. 424, 235 S.W. 875;
the cases cited in 63 A.L.R. 567, note, and 25 A.L.R. 1370, note. The form is not decisive, though it be that of a conclusion, a statement of the result with the antecedent steps omitted. Wigmore, § 1447. "He murdered me," does not cease to be competent as a dying declaration because in the statement of the act there is also an appraisal of the crime.
State v. Mace,
118 N.C. 1244, 24 S.E. 798;
State v. Kuhn, supra.
One does not hold the dying to the observance of all the niceties of speech to which conformity is exacted from a witness on the stand. What is decisive is something deeper and more fundamental than any difference of form. The declaration is kept out if the setting of the occasion satisfies the judge, or in reason ought to satisfy him, that the speaker is giving expression to suspicion or conjecture, and not to known facts. The difficulty is not so much in respect of the governing principle as in its application to varying and equivocal conditions. In this case, the ruling that there
doubt of the purpose that it was understood to serve. There is no disguise of that purpose by counsel for the government. They concede in all candor that Mrs. Shepard's accusation of her husband, when it was finally let in, was received upon the footing of a dying declaration, and not merely as indicative of the persistence of a will to live. Beyond question, the jury considered it for the broader purpose, as the court intended that they should. A different situation would be here if we could fairly say in the light of the whole record that the purpose had been left at large, without identifying token. There would then be room for argument that demand should have been made for an explanatory ruling. Here, the course of the trial put the defendant off his guard. The testimony was received by the trial judge and offered by the government with the plain understanding that it was to be used for an illegitimate purpose, gravely prejudicial. A trial becomes unfair if testimony thus accepted may be used in an appellate court as though admitted for a different purpose, unavowed and unsuspected.
People v. Zackowitz,
254 N.Y.192, 200, 172 N.E. 466. Such, at all events, is the result when the purpose in reserve is so obscure and artificial that it would be unlikely to occur to the minds of uninstructed jurors, and even if it did, would be swallowed up and lost in the one that was disclosed.
(b) Aside, however, from this objection, the accusatory declaration must have been rejected as evidence of a state of mind, though the purpose thus to limit it had been brought to light upon the trial. The defendant had tried to show by Mrs. Shepard's declarations to her friends that she had exhibited a weariness of life and a readiness to end it, the testimony giving plausibility to the hypothesis of suicide. Wigmore, § 1726;
Commonwealth v. Trefethen,
157 Mass. 180, 31 N.E. 961. By the proof of these declarations evincing an unhappy state of mind, the defendant opened the door to the offer by the government
These precepts of caution are a guide to judgment here. There are times when a state of mind, if relevant, may be proved by contemporaneous declarations of feeling or intent.
Mutual Life Ins. Co. v. Hillmon,
145 U. S. 285
145 U. S. 295
99 Mass. 112; Wigmore, §§ 1725, 1726, 1730. Thus, in proceedings for the probate of a will, where the issue is undue influence, the declarations of a testator are competent to prove his feelings for his relatives, but are incompetent as evidence of his conduct or of theirs.
Throckmorton v. Holt,
180 U. S. 552
180 U. S. 571
Waterman v. Whitney,
11 N.Y. 157;
Matter of Kennedy,
167 N.Y. 163, 172, 60 N.E. 442. In suits for the alienation of affections, letters passing between the spouses are admissible in aid of a like purpose. Wigmore, § 1730;
Ash v. Prunier,
105 F. 722;
Mutual Life Ins. Co. v. Hillmon, supra,
145 U. S. 297
Jameson v. Tully,
178 Cal. 380, 173 P. 577;
Cottle v. Johnson,
179 N.C. 426, 102 S.E. 769;
Curtis v. Miller,
269 Pa. 509, 512, 112 A. 747. In damage suits for personal injuries, declarations by the patient to bystanders or physicians are evidence of sufferings or symptoms (Wigmore, §§ 1718, 1719), but are not received to prove the acts, the external circumstances, through which the injuries came about. Wigmore, § 1722;
Amys v. Barton,
(1912) 1 K.B. 40;
Chicago & A. R. Co. v. Industrial Board,
274 Ill. 336, 113 N.E. 629;
Peoria Cordage Co. v. Industrial Board,
284 Ill. 90, 119 N.E. 996;
Larrabee's Case,
120 Me. 242, 113 A. 268;
Maine v. Maryland Casualty Co.,
172 Wis. 350, 178 N.W. 749. Even statements of past sufferings or symptoms are generally excluded (Wigmore, § 1722(b);
Cashin v. New York, N.H. & H. R. Co.,
185 Mass. 543, 70 N.E. 930), though an exception is at times allowed when they are made to a physician (
Roosa v. Loan Co.,
132 Mass. 439, 440;
Cleveland, C., C. & I. R. Co. v. Newell,
104 Ind. 264, 271, 3 N.E. 836;
contra, Davidson v. Cornell,
132 N.Y. 228, 237, 30 N.E. 573). So also in suits upon insurance policies, declarations by an insured that he intends to go upon a journey with another may be evidence of a state of mind lending probability to the conclusion that the purpose was fulfilled.
Mutual Life Ins. Co. v. Hillmon, supra.
The ruling in that case marks the high water line beyond which courts have been unwilling to go. It has developed a substantial body of criticism and commentary.
* Maguire, The
Case, 38 Harvard Law Review, 709, 721, 727; Seligman, An Exception to the Hearsay Rule, 26 Harvard Law Review, 146; Chafee, Review of Wigmore's Treatise, 37 Harvard Law Review, 513, 519.