Commonwealth v. De Leo

Citations

• 242 Pa. 510
• 89 A. 584
• 1914 Pa. LEXIS 682

Syllabus

<p>Criminal law — Murder—Degree of guilt — Principals—Charge to jury.</p> <p>1. On the trial of an indictment for murder, the court is not hound to affirm an abstract proposition of law which, though cor; rect in itself, might under the evidence mislead the jury.</p> <p>2. When a murder occurs in the perpetration of a robbery by two persons acting in concert, both are guilty of the murder, though the killing was the act of one only.</p> <p>3. In a murder trial the court made no error in refusing to charge the jury that “defendants being jointly indicted and tried together the jury has the power to return one verdict as to one and a different verdict as to the other,” where it appeared that defendants acting together in pursuance of a premeditated plan to commit a robbery had attacked a man with whom deceased was walking, and had demanded his money; that when deceased made an outcry one of defendants shot him, while the other held an open razor in his hand in a threatening manner; that after deceased was shot the defendant having the revolver took money out of one pocket of the companion of the deceased, while the defendant having the razor took money out of the other, and that defendants had acted in concert from the time they met the men until the attempted robbery and the commission of the murder.</p> <p>4. The trial judge, in such ease, sufficiently protected defendants’ rights by an instruction to the effect that if the jury should find the defendants guilty they might say whether they were guilty of murder of the first or second degree, and correctly stated the law applicable to the case in charging the jury that if satisfied beyond a reasonable doubt that the murdered man was killed by the defendants or either of them in the perpetration of, or attempt to perpetrate the robbery in the manner charged by the Commonwealth, their verdict should be guilty of murder of the first degree.</p> <p>Evidence — Dying declarations.</p> <p>5. Where evidence of dying declarat