Green v. State

Jones, J., delivered the opinion of the Court. The appellant was indicted in the Circuit Court for Talbot County on a charge of murder and upon trial was convicted of murder in the first degree. He received the sentence of the Court on the 7th day of June, 1902, and brings this appeal from that judgment. The questions upon this appeal are presented by exceptions to evidence admitted by the trial Court against objection made on his behalf.

The victim of the homicide was a woman and the killing was done by shooting with a pistol. After using the pistol with fatal effect upon his victim, he turned the weapon upon himself, presumably with suicidal intent. He was found to have shot himself through the right ear — the bullet passing through the bone and on down through the throat, as described by a physician who saw him ; and also in the chest over the heart — this bullet passing under the muscles and lodging under the big muscles of the arm. Immediately after the shooting he was found to be suffering greatly from shock and was unconscious.

It was soon discovered however that the wounds which he thus inflicted upon himself, after their immediate effects had subsided, were ³⁸⁶ not dangerous. Within two days after the shooting the appellant made certain confessions or statements to an attending physician in the presence of a Justice of the Peace, who took the same down, as to his having done the killing for which he was afterwards indicted and convicted and as to his motive therefor. These confessions or statements were admitted as evidence against the appellant upon his trial by the Court below which overruled objections thereto made by his counsel ; and are the subject of the exceptions brought up by the record. The questions presented upon the exceptions are matters of grave import to the appellant, but as respects the disposition the Court must make of them are free from difficulty.

The rules of law that must determine these questions would seem to be too well settled by our own decisions to make necessary any reference to other authorities. The confessions of the accused, especially in capital cases as this was, are always to be received with caution. The law imposes the condition, upon the admitting of them in evidence, that they be not induced by threats or by promise of advantage to be derived from making them ; and the burden of showing affirmatively that they were not so induced to be made in any given case is upon the prosecutor. Nicholson v. State, 38 Md. 140 .

The confession which was objected to by the prisoner’s counsel and admitted by the Court, as deposed to by Wm. E. Holly-day, a Justice of the Peace who took the same down, appears in the record as follows : “February 6th, 1902. I examined him, I asked him why he shot Carrie Price. He said T shot her because she wouldn’t" do as I wanted her to do, and cursed me and called me a damn liar.

Then I asked' her to get me my things, and I would leave, and Carrie Price said I knew where my things were and I could get them myself; that she was not going to get them, then she left the house. I went after her and asked her to go home, and she said she was not going home, she would go up town and get an officer and have some peace, then I went to the house and got my pistol.’ I asked him what did he do then. He answered, ³⁸⁷ ‘Carrie Price had $12 of my money and Lewis asked Carrie for my (his) money.’” Q. Did she give it to you ? A. Yes, sir.

Q. What did you do then ? A. I fired on her two or three times, I don’t know which, and once after she fell. Q. What house was Carrie at? A. Gussie Wheatley’s.

Q. How came you to take the pistol with you ? A. I went and got it on purpose to shoot her with. Q. What did you shoot Carrie for? A. Well, I was going with her and she would go with other men, that was the cause I shot her.

Q. Was she your wife? A. No, sir ; but I thought she shouldn’t go with other men. The subscriber wrote this while Lewis Green was stating it.” Before offering this confession in evidence the State questioned the witness Hollyday as follows, after proving that he was a Justice of the Peace and that he went to where the prisoner was. “Q. Did he make any statement to you about the shooting ? A. Yes, sir.

Q. Just tell the Court whether it was freely and voluntarily made on his part. A. It was. Q. Were any threats made against him or any inducements held out to him to make a statement ? A. None at all.

Q. Who requested him to make a statement ? A. No one at all.” Then upon cross-examination this witness was asked : “Q. Did you take his statement at his request ? A. I asked him if he was willing to give a statement and he said ‘yes,’ and I asked him to give the cause of the shooting. He said he had a cause.

That is the only cause he gave me. Q. Did you tell him he better tell ? A. No, sir. Q. You didn’t ask him to tell ?

A. No, sir, I told him he was not required to incriminate himself.” Upon further examination by the State he said: “He did freely and voluntarily make it (the statement) himself.