Carlisle v. State

1. Principals and Accomplices—Punishment.—In this State there is no difference between the punishment of an accomplice and a principal, because the crime is the same, and the legal maxim,11 Qui facit per alium facit per se,” is of universal application both in civil and criminal cases. 2. Jurisdiction of Acts Committed by an Accomplice in Another County.—Where all the acts constituting the defendant an accomplice were committed in the county of C., but the homicide was committed by the principal in the county of G., held, that the District Court of G. County had jurisdiction to try the accomplice for the murder committed by the principal in that county.

Omitting formal parts, the charging part of the indictment is as follows, viz.: “ That in said county of Grayson and State of Texas, on the 28th day of April, A. D. 1892, one Charles Luttrell did, with malice aforethought, kill W. T. Sharman, by then and there shooting him with a shot gun; and the grand jurors aforesaid upon their oaths do further present in said court, that one John T. Carlisle, on the 25th day of April, A. D. 1892, prior to the commission of said offense by the said Charles Luttrell as aforesaid, in the county and State aforesaid, did unlawfully and willfully, and of his malice aforethought, advise and encourage the said Charles Luttrell to commit the said offense, and did prepare and furnish arms and aid to the said Charles Luttrell for the purpose of assisting the said Charles Luttrell in the commission and execution of said offense; the said John T. Carlisle not being present at the commission of said offense by the said Charles Luttrell; against the peace and dignity of the State. ’ ’ At the trial the verdict and judgment found the defendant guilty as an accomplice to murder in the first degree and assessed the punishment at death. This is a companion case to that of Charles Luttrell v. The State, ante, page 493, and that case is referred to as containing a fuller exposition of some of the testimony upon points which were involved in both cases. The evidence in the case is substantially as follows: In the city of Denison, county of Grayson, State of Texas, between the hours of 1 and 2 o’clock a. m,, on the 28th day of April, 1892, W. T. Sharman, then lying in bed with his wife and infant child, was fired upon with a shot gun over the top of a window, which had been lowered about six inches, by a person standing upon a ladder placed against the house on the outside; that twelve buck shot entered his person, and that from the effects of such shot he instantly died. During the day of the 28th the stock of a shot gun was found in a vacant lot a few blocks from where the killing was done, and between deceased’s house and the Union Depot. A short distance further on the barrels of a double-barreled shot gun were found; the barrels had one empty shell and one loaded shell in them. The loaded shell contained twelve shot, which were of similar size of those extracted from the person of W. T. Sharman by Dr. W. T. Boothe, and exhibted in court, It was proved, that about the 1st of April, 1892, Charles Luttrell and J. F, Fogg were in the city of Denison together; that Luttrell went to the express office in Denison and got therefrom a box containing a gun, the said box having been shipped from McKinney, Collin County, Texas, and was addressed to “ C. Luthell,” but was signed for by Luttrell in his own name of C. Luttrell. He took the box to a pawnbroker shop, and there opened it and pawned the gun for $8, signing his full name, Charles Luttrell, on the pawn ticket; the gun was redeemed on Tuesday, April 26, 1892, and this ticket was returned to the broker that morning. After pawning the gun Luttrell went to Fort Worth, and from there to Vernon, where he worked at his trade of blacksmithing until the 23d day of April, 1892, on which day he returned to Fort Worth, and on Monday, April 25, he went to Denison. April 26, 1892, John Poe, alias Joe Brooks, was in Denison, and on that and the following day made inquiries about Sharman, and located his (Sharman’s) dwelling house. He went to Taylor & Sharman’s blacksmith shop, and made Sharman’s acquaintance, and got Sharman to make him a pair of clamps, representing himself to be a dealer in horses. J. F. Fogg was in Denison on the evening of April 27, about the time the killing was done, or immediately after a hard rain fell in Denison. J. F. Fogg and Charles Luttrell were seen at the depot in Denison about 4:30 o’clock on the morning of the 28tli; their shoes were muddy and their •clothes wet. They took the train for Fort Worth. The train was due to i leave at 4:30 a. m., but was a little late on that morning. Two days’ later Luttrell went to Nashville, Tennessee, where J. M. Brown, who re-' ■sided at Fort Worth, was with his racing outfit; from there he went with Brown to Chicago. From Chicago Brown sent him to Lake Charles, Louisiana, where he remained a few weeks under an assumed name; from Lake Charles he went to New Orleans; and from New Orleans he went, in September, by Brown’s direction, to Gonzales County, Texas, with a letter of introduction from Brown to W. E. Jones, by whom he was arrested and placed m jail, Brown having been killed in Chicago two or three days previously. In 1880, in Lee County, Texas, J. M. Brown then being sheriff of that county, one Sam Sparks was murdered in the town of Giddings, in the street at night. In 1887 or 1888, Brown then having moved to Fort Worth, indictments were found against one Ed. Myers and the defendant in this case, J. T. Carlisle, for the murder of Sparks. At the time of the killing of Sparks Ed. Myers was a deputy of J. M. Brown. There was a deadly enmity existing between Brown and Sparks. Carlisle and Sparks were friendly, as were Carlisle and Brown. In the fall of 1888 Myers was tried upon said charge, found'guilty, and sentenced to the penitentiary for the term of twenty years. Upon this trial W. T. Sliarman testified, that he was an eye-witness to the killing of Sparks. That he was standing in a few feet of Sparks when he was killed; that Carlisle and Sparks were walking arm in arm towards Sparks’ horse, which was hitched near by, and that Myers slipped up behind them, and the night being excessively dark, that he stooped to get Sparks’ head above the line of the horizon, and fired a pistol directly at Sparks’ head, the ball entering the base of the brain and ranging upward and forward; that Sparks fell dead; that Carlisle and Myers ran away; that he recognized Carlisle by his voice, and Myers by the light of the pistol flash; that he had not told of it before for fear that his own life would be in danger. There was no other witness who professed to have seen the killing, or who connected Carlisle with it. J. M. Brown was shown to have been a desperate and dangerous man, who had no regard for human life, and hesitated at nothing to secure revenge, and would employ agents to carry out his bloody schemes. The defendant Carlisle left Lee County in 1882, and for the last eight years resided the greater part of the time at Lebanon, Collin County, Texas, where he had a good reputation and was considered an honest, hard working man. The gunstock and barrels found at Denison on the day after the killing were produced in court, and substantially, not absolutely, identified as a gun which Carlisle had at Lebanon in the spring of this year. Carlisle was arrested at Hot Springs, Arkansas, in the early part of 1891, on the charge of killing Sparks. At the May Term of the court in Lee County, in that year, the case was continued by the State, and Carlisle admitted to bail, the bail being furnished by business partners of J. M. Brown, at Fort Worth. At the November Term, 1891, of the court, in Lee County, Carlisle did not appear, and his bail was forfeited, but the forfeiture set aside upon a showing that Carlisle was sick in Fort Worth, and unable to be removed. Sharman was present in Lee County at both said terms of court. After Carlisle’s recovery, about December 1, 1891, he was rearrested and taken to Lee County. He again gave bond, with the same bondsmen, and on the 26th of December, 1891, went to Lebanon, Collin County, and went to work in the blacksmith shop with K. H. Anderson. He remained there without any absences till he started to Giddings, April 22, 1892, to attend his trial, which was set for the second Monday in May, 1892. W. E. Jones, testified: That he was sheriff of Gonzales County, Texas, and that he knew Charles Luttrell. First saw him in Gonzales County, last September. He came there to see me. I had a warrant for his arrest for the murder of W. T. Sharman. He thought I was his friend, and I talked with him about three hours before I arrested him. He told me that he killed Sharman. That he put a ladder up the side of the house, and fired over the top of the window. That after he fired Sharman said, “Mama,” and spoke no more. He first said Fogg was with him, afterwards that Poe was with him. I called his attention to this contradiction, and he said, “Well, they think it was Fogg, and so long as they are after the wrong man they won’t get the right one.” I asked him what Carlisle had to do with it, and he replied, “ Nothing in the world.” I then arrested him, and put him in jail at Gonzales, and telegraphed to the sheriff of Grayson County. W. M. Fox testified: That on the 10th of February defendant told him that he had two men he wanted killed, and that there was money in it; 83000 on the head of one and 8500 on the other. He said he had a friend in Tennessee who wanted Sparks killed, and the other fellow that he wanted killed was named Sharman, and that he lived in Denison. That he would pay 8500 to have him killed, as he was a witness against him and was going, to swear him into the penitentiary. The witness said that he warned Sparks and Sharman that they were in danger, and told the sheriff of Lee County that he would get the money without killing Sparks. That he was mad because Carlisle had made him such a proposition, and that he wanted revenge, and intended to get the 83000 without killing Sparks. The witness D. C. Lee testified, in substance: Fogg Took dinner at his restaurant in Fort Worth on the 24th day of April. That Fogg told him, witness, that he, Fogg, was going to Giddings to attend Carlisle’s trial for murder. That Carlisle was as innocent as an unborn babe, but that they were going to hang him. He said, “There is a son-of-a-bitch at Denison who is going to swear his life away. Carlisle took him up a poor boy, and learned him a trade and made a man of him. Any damned son-of-a-bitch that would do such a thing ought to be killed.” (This conversation was objected to by defendant as incompetent, irrelevant, and immaterial, and he reserved a bill of exceptions to its admission by the court.) Dick Harrison testified, substantially, as did the witness Lee, and defendant reserved a bill of exceptions to his testimony. The witnesses Carlyle, Spradling, Taylor, Grant, Massie, and Scarborough testified to threats made by defendant against deceased, to the effect that if he could get deceased out of the way he could beat his case. That Sharman never would appear as a witness against him, etc. To Dave Sharman defendant said, “If your brother comes down to testify against me this fall, I will send him over the river before I go.” Defendant testified as a witness in his own behalf. He denied positively that he had made any of the threats or statements attributed to him by the witnesses. Stated that he got acquainted with Luttrell in November, 1891, in Fort Worth. That he did not see him from that time until he met him at Mrs. Brown’s on April 24. That while in Fort Worth in November he had borrowed a gun from Fogg. That in March Fogg wrote him to send the gun to “C. Luthel,” Denison. Did not know who “C. Luthel” was; had no idea it was C. Luttrell. Did not know why he wanted it sent to Denison, but it was Fogg’s gun, and I would have sent it to anybody that he told me to. The gun found at Denison was here shown to witness, and he said, “ This is the same make of a gun as that I had, though that was not broken like this.” He stated, “Ihad nothing to do with the killing of Sharman whatever, and no knowledge of it until after it occurred.”