Court Opinion

ID: 9647212
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-23 13:26:41.936272+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:11:46.577520
License: Public Domain

Dissenting Opinion by
Mb. Justice Musmanno:
On May 4, 1955, at an address known as Willow St., R. D. No. 1 in Lancaster County, the dead and severely beaten body of Will Glasgow was found in a small one-room house in which he had lived (intermittently) with Mrs. Mary E. Sauders for some twenty *390years without marriage ties, ritual, or obligation. No witness came forth to describe how Glasgow was killed but the condition of the body, as described professionally, gave indisputable proof of a violent death caused by the use of a blunt instrument which had descended many times on its human target.
Several hours after the discovery of the body, Mrs. Sauders was taken into custody by the State Police and charged with murder. She was indicted, tried, and convicted of murder in the first degree, and sentenced to life imprisonment. She has appealed to this Court contending that the evidence presented by the Commonwealth did not measure up to the standard required by law for conviction and that, therefore, she should be discharged from custody.
It is admitted by the Commonwealth that the evidence against Mrs. Sauders is entirely circumstantial but it argues, and properly so, that circumstantial evidence may be enough to sustain a conviction of any crime including murder in the first degree. The only question in this case is whether the circumstances actually satisfy the mind beyond a reasonable doubt that Mrs. Sauders killed Will Glasgow.
From the record one is justified in concluding that the Commonwealth proved that Mrs. Sauders and Glasgow lived together in a house next door to one owned by Leroy Hilton; that at about 8 p.m., on May 3rd, Thos. Harden, Hilton’s son-in-law, went to Glasgow’s house to tell Mrs. Sauders that she was wanted on the telephone in the Hilton house; that Harden saw Glasgow at the time and he was alive; that on the following day at 2 p.m., he went again to the Glasgow house and found Glasgow dead; that at about 9 :30 p.m., on May 3rd, the previous night, Mrs. Sauders had left the Glasgow house in a taxicab driven by James T. Browning who, under her direction and instructions, took her *391to numerous bars and cafes in Lancaster where she consumed considerable quantities of alcoholic beverages; that she displayed on one occasion three $100 bills and a $50 bill; that she paid for the expensive taxi hire and gave Browning money to buy drinks; that at 4:30 in the morning he left her at an address on South Water Street; that several hours later he called for her and drove her around town; that she bought and changed into a new dress; that she went to a cemetery memorial dealer and there purchased for $115 a tombstone to be placed over the grave of her son; that sometime during the day she said that “Will [Glasgow] had hemorrhaged but I don’t think he committed suicide”; that she went to Groff’s Funeral Home to which Glasgow’s body had been taken and while there was arrested by the State Police. A chemist, member of the State Police, testified that some stains and spots on Mrs. Sauders’ dress and coat were dried human blood. When questioned about these spots, Mrs. Sauders told two different stories: one, that her dress had been spotted from injuries sustained by Glasgow in an automobile accident and, two, that her dress had been stained as a result of a severe nosebleed which Glasgow suffered Avhen a George Streeter had struck GlasgOAV with his fist. When questioned about the money she had in her possession, Mrs. Sauders said that GlasgOAV had given her $238 to buy a grave marker for her son. While being questioned on the subject of money she asked the police if they had not found $105 in Glasgow’s pocketbook. That amount was in fact found in a wallet under the pillow in Glasgow’s bed.
The Commonwealth contends that the evidence proves that Mrs. Sauders killed Glasgow and that she did so in order to obtain his money. If larceny or robbery was the object of the homicide, why' did shé not *392also take the $105? Or did she shrewdly leave that amount in order to rebut a possible accusation of a robbery-murder ?
There are unquestionably many circumstances in this case which point toward Mrs. Sauders as the murderer of Will Glasgow. These circumstances fall about her like a heavy and violent rain which envelopes a house in the country. One can see the structure through the curtain of mist and sheets of water but one cannot say with precision whether the building is two or four stories high, whether it is constructed of brick, stone, or wood, what its color may be, and whether it is inhabited or not. All one can say is that it is a house — presumably. The money found on the defendant, the spots on her dress, and the conflicting stories about the spots all envelop the defendant in a mist and fog of supposed guilt, but not one piece of evidence, or all taken together, cause her to stand out clearly and distinctly as the person who felled Glasgow in a foul and bloody murder.
Mrs. Sauders’ story that Glasgow gave her money to buy a tombstone is confirmed in the fact that she actually did purchase a tombstone. Her statement to the cab driver Browning that she did not believe Glasgow had committed suicide was prompted, she explained, by the news received from the funeral director that Glasgow was dead.
The Commonwealth maintains in its brief that: “It is almost too clear for argument that the only way this blood could have spattered on the defendant’s dress and coat was for the defendant to have been present at the time that the victim was murdered.” It will be recalled that Mrs. Sauders gave two explanations as to how the blood spots had appeared on her dress: (1) that Glasgow had been in an automobile accident and (2) that Glasgow had suffered a severe *393nosebleed. But neither of these admissions (contradictory to each other) would prove that she was present when Glasgow was killed.* Glasgow could have been murdered by someone else, with or without Mrs. Sauders’ knowledge, and some of his blood attach to her dress without her being present at the time of the killing. Since the pictures and descriptions of the body and bed reveal that Glasgow lost large quantities of blood, it is impossible to assume that Mrs. Sauder could have wielded an instrument which broke the dike of Glasgow’s life fluid and then have emerged from the gory flood with only a slight spattering of droplets on her clothing. The house in which Glasgow and Sauders lived was not much better than a shack and it had no running water facilities. The State Police investigation uncovered no evidence that garments had been washed in the severely limited time within which such laundering could have been accomplished, namely, between 8 p.m., when Glasgow was seen by Hardin alive and 9:30 when Mrs. Sauders left the habitation. It is to be observed further that the spattering of blood droplets on Mrs. Sauders’ dress was so inconspicuous that though she wore the dress the entire evening and night as she proceeded from one drinking place to another no witness was produced to say he had observed anything suspicious about her clothing. Even Browning, the cab driver, noticed no blood spots on her garments although he did say that after they had been in numerous taverns and cafes, at one of which places Mrs. Sauders drank six to eight glasses of beer, she made the remark that her dress had been soiled by beer and for that reason she wished *394to change it. But this occurred at least 15 hours after she had left Glasgow’s house.
Finally, on the subject of blood, the chemist could not estimate the age of the spots on the dress, which allows for the possibility that the spots had attached innocuously to the dress a long time before GlasgoAv’s death. While the hypothesis that Mrs. Sauders murdered Glasgow is not to be excluded, the law should not permit her conviction to stand on the basis of the bare possibility she might have killed Glasgow. If possibility and accessibility are to be the criteria for establishing guilt, then all the people living in the neighborhood of the Glasgow house could be and Avould be suspect. Between the time that Glasgow was last seen alive by Harden and the time he was discovered dead, 18 hours expired, certainly a long enough time for the murder to have been committed without Mrs. Sauders’ participation or knowledge.
On the basis of guilt, considering the evidence Avhich was presented in Court, Mrs. Sauders, in order to commit the crime, would have had to do the following between 8 and 9:30 p.m., Máy 3rd. At 8 p.m. she Avould have had to leave the GlasgOAV house and proceed to the Hilton house to answer a telephone call; return to the Glasgow house and there Avield a blunt instrument at least ten times on the head and body of Glasgow; do away with the blunt instrument; cleanse herself of the resulting blood; wash, hide, or destroy bloody garments; go again to the Hilton house at 8:30 of 8:45 to telephone the taxicab company for a cab; and return to the Glasgow house to prepare for her night of carousal. If she did not kill- Glasgow pri- or to visiting the Hilton house for the second telephone call at 8:30-8:45, then she had to accomplish the killing, washing, concealing and all the other gory details between 8:45 and 9:30, and do all this so éf*395flciently that the State Police with all their most skilled and modern methods of detecting, investigating, searching, and scrutinizing, were unable to discover any article or item in the house which would definitely connect Mrs. Sauders with the killing. This does not sound reasonable; it does not sound credible.
While the Commonwealth is not required to establish motive for a murder if it can actually show that the defendant did kill the victim wilfully, deliberately, and with malice aforethought, it cannot be assumed, where the circumstances are capable of many interpretations, that robbery would be enough motive for a woman, who had not theretofore given any evidence of homicidal tendencies, to accomplish a violent killing of her benefactor and friend for $400 or $500. Although the amount of money in Mrs. Sanders’ possession at the time of her arrest was considerable for one in her apparent station of life, it seems that she was given to spending freely even before the fatal night of May 3-4, 1955. Browning testified that on the previous Friday or Saturday night she had run up a taxi bill of $17.
There is no evidence that Mrs. Sauders and Glasgow had quarreled the night of the killing, there is no testimony that she had ever behaved violently toward him on previous occasions, there is no suggestion that there existed between them a hostility which could have urged her into a vengeful act of violent reprisal against him.
The conflicting stories which Mrs. Sauders told about the origin of the blood spots on her dress, neither one of which she corroborated with fact, are definitely evidence against her credibility. While the Commonwealth is not required to attempt to reconcile contradictions in an accused’s story of. exculpation, it is nevertheless to be noted that Mrs. Sauders’ almost *396continuous drinking from about 10 p.m. on May 3rd until about 4 p.m., the following day (with the exception of some 4 or 5 hours given to sleep) could not have contributed to a clear head for thinking and remembering. Moreover, a short time after making the contradictory statements she had to be taken to the hospital for an emergency appendicitis operation. Thus, her confusing utterances, suspicion-provoking as they are, can not rise to a very high degree of self-incrimination without some positive supporting circumstance that neither story is worthy of belief.
An indication of the irresponsible tongue which formed her utterances can be gained from the fact that at one point in her interrogation Mrs. Sauders said that she would assume the entire blame for the killing because she hated to see “Brownie [the taxicab driver] burn ... he is too young to die.” No one accused Brownie [James T. Browning] of the murder and there was not the slightest intimation on the part of anyone that Browning could have been implicated in the murder in any way.
However, apart from all this, a conviction of murder cannot be based on improbable stories told by the accused. A man standing unarmed by the body of a freshly stabbed or shot person can say that an eagle swooped down and strangled the victim at his feet, and still not be amenable to criminal prosecution on that obviously fabricated story.
Regretful as the law must be that a murder may (at least for the moment) go unpunished, disappointed as society might even feel that a person intimately associated with the victim and the events surrounding his death, should escape condemnation, no system of jurisprudence worthy of the name could or should allow a conviction to stand when legal proof is missing, corroborating circumstances are lacking, and suspicious *397particulars remain in the realm of speculation,. guess, and surmise.
When circumstantial evidence alone is depended upon for conviction, it must be of such a character that it points unequivocally in one direction alone. A roadsign at cross-highways which points in two opposite directions for the same geographical destination is valueless. Evidence which levels accusing fingers at several people when only one person can be guilty is as worthless as a weather vane in a hurricane. Circumstantial evidence can be the very best of evidence to establish an accurate and trustworthy conclusion when, like a bridge crossing a wide stream, it rests on solid piers which cannot be washed away by the slightest current of inquiry, will not crumble under hammer blows of testing, and will not fall apart because of inherent weakness in the building material. On what kind of piers does the bridge of conviction in this case rest?
Motive? The Commonwealth says it was robbery. When the hammer begins to test, we find that as a robber Mrs. Sauders did not take all the money which was available to her hand. We find further that her story that Glasgow gave her money to buy a tombstone for her son was corroborated in fact. And we find further that she spent large sums of money for taxicab fares even before the killing.
Accessibility to commit the crime? This pier.is the weakest of all. Although neighbors testified they heard no unusual noises during the night after Mrs. Sauders left Glasgow’s house, neither did they hear any unusual noises when, according to the Commonwealth, Mrs. Sauders was committing the crime. There was no evidence that Glasgow was dead when Mrs. Sauders left his house, and some 18 hours were to pass before he was discovered dead, in all of which time the *398murder could have been committed by someone other than Mrs. Sauders.
Evidence of instrument used in committing the murder? Nothing was found which would connect Mrs. Sauders with the assumed blunt instrument which accomplished the killing.
Mutely incriminating evidence? The fragmentary spots of blood on Mrs. Sauders’ dress could have come from contact with Glasgow or his blood in many ways without the contact having been due to a murderous attack.
Not a pier remains solidly upholding the bridge of conviction. Instead of crossing over on a bridge, the theory of prosecution leaps from stones of suspicion to stones of surmise, and from stones of assumption to stones of argumentation. This is not enough to take any person to a penitentiary for life. It is not enough to sustain any conviction under our salutary system which specifically states that guilt must be established beyond a reasonable doubt. The doubts in this case are not only reasonable. They envelop the entire prosecution and conviction in clouds of uncertainty and indecision. Such a conviction cannot and should not stand.
I dissent.

 It was not shown nor was any attempt made to show that the blood spots on Mrs. Sauders’ dress were of. the same type as Glasgow’s blood.