Source: http://www.chanrobles.com/usa/us_supremecourt/290/96/case.php
Timestamp: 2020-01-27 03:36:46
Document Index: 41712812

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

Certiorari, 289 U.S. 721, to review the affirmance of a sentence on conviction of murder. chanrobles.com-red
The crime is charged to have been committed by poisoning the victim with bichloride of mercury. The defendant was in love with another woman, and wished to make her his wife. There is circumstantial evidence chanrobles.com-red
She said, "Dr. Shepard has poisoned me." The admission of this declaration, if erroneous, was more than unsubstantial error. As to that, the parties are agreed. The voice of the dead wife was heard in accusation of her husband, and the accusation was accepted as evidence of guilt. If the evidence was incompetent, the verdict may not stand. chanrobles.com-red
Nothing in the condition of the patient on May 22 gives fair support to the conclusion that hope had then been lost. She may have thought she was going to die and have said so to her nurse, but this was consistent with hope, which could not have been put aside without more to quench it. Indeed, a fortnight later, she said to one of her physicians, though her condition was then grave, chanrobles.com-red
The petitioner insists that the form of the declaration exhibits other defects that call for its exclusion, apart from the objection that death was not imminent and that chanrobles.com-red
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; State v. Williams, 67 N.C. 12; State v. Jefferson, 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; cf. 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 chanrobles.com-red
(a) The testimony was neither offered nor received for the strained and narrow purpose now suggested as legitimate. It was offered and received as proof of a dying declaration. What was said by Mrs. Shepard lying ill upon her death bed was to be weighed as if a like statement had been made upon the stand. The course of the trial makes this an inescapable conclusion. The government withdrew the testimony when it was unaccompanied by proof that the declarant expected to die. Only when proof of her expectation had been supplied was the offer renewed and the testimony received again. For the reasons already considered, the proof was inadequate to show a consciousness of impending death and the abandonment of hope; but inadequate though it was, there can be no chanrobles.com-red
(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 chanrobles.com-red
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; Shailer v. Bumstead, 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, chanrobles.com-red
180 U. S. 571-573; 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.7d 2; Mutual Life Ins. Co. v. Hillmon, supra, p. 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. * Declarations chanrobles.com-red