State v. Wintzingerode

Citations

• 9 Or. 153

Syllabus

<p>Indictment — Sufficiency of.</p> <p>An indictment for murder, in the form provided by section seventy of the criminal code, is sufficient.</p> <p>Murder — Degrees of.</p> <p>If the acts specified in the indictment constitute the crime of murder in the first degree, under section 506 of the criminal code, it will support a conviction in either degree.</p> <p>Evidence — Collateral Offences.</p> <p>Evidence, if relevant to the issue in a criminal action, is not rendered inadmissible for the reason that it tends to prove the defendant guilty of collateral offenses.</p> <p>Intent — How May be Shown.</p> <p>Evidence of the defendant having procured two guns shortly before the murder, which were found soon after, secreted in the straw, under the head of his bed, in a room in a barn, in which he usually slept, was properly admitted to show his intent, although only one of them could have been used in perpetrating the crime. Such evidence would have been admissible though neither of them had been actually used.</p> <p>Circumstances Admissible.</p> <p>Evidence that the defendant was seen the day after the murder, in possession of a certain sum of money, in connection with other evidence that he did not possess so great an amount prior thereto, but that deceased did have a similar amount of money of the same kind only a few days before his death, was admissible to connect the defendant with the commission of the murder. It might, in connection with the other evidence offered by the state, justify an inference that it was the fruits of that crime, and the motive for its commission.</p> <p>Confessions, Admissibility' of — Common Law Rule Prevails.</p> <p>Section 169 of the criminal code has not altered the rule of the common law as to the inadmissibility of confessions induced by the influence of hope, applied to the prisoner’s mind by an officer of the law having him in custody on a charge of crime.</p> <p>When a confession has been improperly obtained by such officer of a p