Court Opinion

ID: 9572439
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-21 20:41:38.530746+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T12:32:56.114623
License: Public Domain

Whittle, J.,
dissenting.
I have no difficulty in following the majority on all points save one, which is fatal to the case, i. <?., the lack of evidence tending to prove an essential element of the corpus delicti, “that the deceased met death by criminal violence”. In my view there is a complete lack of such proof. When no criminal violence has been shown, no amount of suspicion pointing to a possible criminal agent will suffice.
The record shows that the Commonwealth skips over this essential legal requirement and immediately seizes upon the unsavory character of the accused and the circumstances surrounding the discovery of the body. The case was tried on the theory that if you give a dog a name sufficiently bad you may destroy it with impunity. It is undeniable that the bad name was fully and nauseously established, and the jury, believing this all-sufficient, speculated that death resulted from criminal violenqe when no proof of such fact appears in the record.
This infant “conceived and born in sin” came into the world without professional aid, the mother being alone when the child was born; there was neither a, record of the child’s birth nor a record of its death; she feared publicity. There was evidence to the effect that the accused had threatened to do away with the baby, and there was also evidence that she falsely stated to the police officers that she had disposed of the remains after the baby died by placing the body in the furnace.
Admittedly, the circumstances surrounding the birth of the baby and the disposition of the body after death were unnatural. However, the accused was not being tried for her unnatural actions, she was indicted and tried for the *359murder of her baby. The medical evidence for the Commonwealth confirms the fact that the infant was suffering from a throat irritation not caused by violence but by a germ infection, and that there were no visible signs of criminal violence. The Commonwealth attempted to establish a criminal cause of death by calling for an autopsic examination the result of which was negative. If it were not necessary under the law to establish criminality then why the necessity for this extreme measure?
Unfortunately, many infants die of asphyxiation or suffocation without the intervention of a criminal agency. All that has been here shown is that death was due to “asphyxia, probably due to smothering, suffocation”. “Probably” denotes conjecture and speculation — not proof. Such evidence does not .establish “criminal violence” beyond a reasonable doubt.
For this reason I feel that the judgment should be reversed and the case remanded for further proceedings if the Commonwealth be so advised.