United States v. Lee

1. A prayer not founded upon any evidence in the case should be refused. 2. The barbarous manner in which a homicide was committed does not of itself furnish any basis for the defence of insanity. 8, An instruction to the jury which rests upon the idea that there is a grade of insanity not sufficient to acquit a party of manslaughter, and yet sufficient to acquit him of murder, should be refused; the court does not recognize such a distinction in the forms of insanity. 4. On a motion for a new trial it is no ground of objection to a person as a juror that the law exempts him from jury service; he is not disqualified thereby, and, it being a personal privilege, he may waive it.

STATEMENT OE THE CASE. Indictment for murder; conviction; appeal, and judgment affirmed. The facts of this case, as gathered from the bill of exceptions, are as follows: The defendant’s wife, Mary Lee, with her two children, were living at the house of a married sister, in the city of Washington. The defendant and his wife had lived apart for three months prior to the day of the killing. The cause of the separation being cruel and inhuman treatment of his wife by the defendant. At about eight o’clock in the evening (the day of the killing) the defendant visited his wife, remaining with her about half an hour. The conversation was not unfriendly until the defendant, in reply to a remark made by his wife, called her a liar. Thereupon he' was requested by his sister-inr law to go away. He immediately did so, first apologizing for his offensive remark to his wife. Several persons who were in the same room at the time, or in the adjoining room, testified that at this time the defendant acted naturally and did not seem to be under the influence of liquor. The immediate circumstances attending and following the homicide in question were as follows: About half, past eight o’clock on the same evening the defendant endeavored to borrow a pistol from a friend of his. He did not succeed in getting a pistol at that time. About half past nine o’clock he went again to the house where his wife was and endeavored to open the door, which had been locked to keep him out. The door not being opened upon his demand, he forced it open, entered the house, and at once began an indiscriminate attack upon the inmates of the house by shooting at them with a revolver. His wife fled from the house. He ran out after her. She screamed as she ran and begged him not to kill her. He replied: “ Gfod damn you, I will kill you.” Having chased her in this way several hundred feet he fired one shot at her. She still ran on and he followed and finally overtook her within the length of an ordinary city block from the house where she lived. He then struck her twice on the head with the revolver, inflicting severe wounds, and finally put his revolver to her body and fired another shot. He left her at once and went to a drug store in the vicinity and asked if he could purchase some cartridges. Eeceiving a negative answer he went on-Meeting an acquaintance he told him he had killed his wife and her sister, and that if he could have gotten some more cartridges he would have gone back and killed “the whole damned kit of them.” To another person a few moments later he said he had killed his wife and was going to be hanged for it. About eleven o’clock the same night the defendant was arrested by several policemen. On the way to the station house he was informed that his wife was dead; whereupon he said he had been assaulted with an axe by his wife’s sister. All the witnesses who testified to seeing the defendant after the shooting said that he seemed to be not drunk, but “as though he had been drinking.” Mary Lee died about half an hour after she was shot by the defendant. In defence no testimony was offered as to the actual killing, or as to what occurred when the defendant made his first visit to his wife on the evening in question. But several witnesses were examined on behalf of the defendant, whose testimony, it was claimed by his counsel, tended to prove that at the time of the killing the defendant was wholly or partially insane. This testimony tended to show that for several weeks prior to the day of the homicide, and on that day, the defendant had been distressed about his separation from his wife and his inability to get her to return to live with him, and had threatened to kill himself; that he loved his wife; and that throughout the day of the killing up to six o’clock in the evening he had not been in his usual state of mind. One of these witnesses said he acted “ very funny,” and that it seemed to her “ like he was crazy.” Another witness said that on that day the defendant acted like a maniac. Two others testified that on that day the defendant spoke to another woman under the impression apparently that she was his wife, and said to her, “ Mamie, come back and live with me.” Several of the defendant’s witnesses also testified that for several weeks immediately prior to the homicide the defendant had been drinking intoxicating liquor frequently, although he did not seem to be drunk. No witness testified that in his or her opinion the defendant was insane, except as above stated, and none said that in his or her opinion the. defendant was unable to distinguish right from wrong, or to refrain from killing his wife, or to know that to kill her was against the law. No question was asked any of the witnesses on those points. There the defence rested. In rebuttal the Government offered to the jury evidence tending to prove that the defendant had never been of unsound mind. This was all the evidence in the case. Thereupon counsel for the defendant requested the'court to instruct the jury as follows: “If the jury are not satisfied from the evidence that the defendant, at the time he committed the act, was so mentally unsound as to render him incapable of judging between right and wrong, yet if the jury find from the evidence that there was such a degree of mental unsoundness existing at the time of the homicide as to render the defendant incapable of premeditation and of forming such an intent as the jury .believe the circumstances of this case would reasonably impute to a man of sound mind, they may consider such degree of mental unsoundness in determining the question whether the act was murder or manslaughter.” But the court refused to give such instruction, to which refusal the defendant's counsel excepted. No exception was taken to the charge of the court to the jury. Yerdict, guilty as indicted. A motion for a new trial was then made on the principal ground that one of the jurors who sat in the case was disqualified under the provisions of section 875 of the Revised Statutes of the District of Columbia, he being at the time in the employ of the United States and the District of Columbia as a watchman in the engineer department, District of Columbia, appointed by the Commissioners of the District of Columbia, and in receipt of an annual salary of $480, paid out of the Treasury of the United States, all of which was discovered after the trial, and could not have been ascertained by reasonable diligence before the trial. By section 815, Rev. Stat. D. C., it is provided that “All salaried officers of the Government of the United States * * * shall he exempt from jury duty, and their names shall not he placed on the jury-lists.” The motion for a new trial being overruled, the defendant went to the General Term on appeal and on the exception taken at the trial.