Commonwealth v. Keeler

Citations

• 242 Pa. 416
• 89 A. 558
• 1913 Pa. LEXIS 895

Syllabus

<p>Criminal law — Murder — Evidence — Cross-examination — Degree of guilt — Intoxication—Case for jwry.</p> <p>1. Where on the trial of one accused of murder it appeared from the testimony of a train conductor that on the morning of the killing the defendant, while riding on Ms train to Clearfield where the crime was committed, remarked as he gave the witness Ms ticket, “I guess that will take me to Clearfield or to jail,” and counsel for the defendant proposed to ask the witness on cross-examination whether the remark testified to by Mm as having been made by defendant was not a common remark made by passengers on Ms train, the court made no error in sustaining an objection to this offer, where counsel for defendant did not offer to show that the remark bad been made by the defendant in a jocular sense or that it was meaningless drunken babble.</p> <p>2. In the trial of an indictment for murder it appeared that defendant bad been an employee of a brewery belonging to deceased and had been discharged; that he declared on several occasions shortly before the shooting that, “They need a good cleaning up,” and “When 1 start I will be dirty”; that the day before the killing he said to the deceased, “Well, I’m going to have those two hours or there will be hell around here to-morrow”; that about one o’clock on the day of the shooting he purchased a revolver; that shortly thereafter he said he was going over to Clearfield to “Raise hell”; that on the train he remarked to the conductor, as he gave him his ticket, “I guess that will take me to Clearfield or to jail;” that at the brewery he said to a man who accidentally touched him, ‘Don’t touch me, I am a bad man, a damned bad man, I’m going to do something bad before long”; that when the brewmaster ordered the bartender not to serve him any more beer, defendant said, “That will be your last anyway, you will.not give anybody any beer any more......just give me about five minutes” ; that the deceased came in and endeavored