State v. Wells

[김정환연구생]

State v. Wells 

51 Wis.2d 477, 187 N.W.2d 328 (1971) 

Facts 

 There was an accomplice as decoy and lookout for mugging-type robbery. A woman associate was used to persuade the victim to step out onto his porch, and to keep watch. Without warning, the defendant, using a family sized water bottle, harshly beat Frederick Gens who was the eighty-one-year-old victim and took the victim’s wallet. In the hospital where it was ascertained that he had been beaten extensively about the head and chest, suffering, among other injuries, four deep scalp lacerations and a fractured skull. It is stipulated that he died of the skull fracture and cerebral damage.  

 The trial convicted the defendant of first degree murder. 

Issues 

 The issue is whether, rather than first-degree murder, there was presumptive intent to kill the victim when the defendant struck the victim using a family sized soda bottle.     

Rule 

• Farino v. State (1931), 203 Wis. 374, 380, 234 N. W. 366. 

• Melli v. State (1936), 220 Wis. 419, 265 N. W. 79 

• State v. Cole (1971), 50 Wis.2d 449, 453, 454, 184 N.W.2d 75. 

Application 

• The presumption of the defendant’s intentional killing due to the infliction of a wound naturally is not nonsense, resulting the defendant to be guilty of murder in the first degree. The defendant is witnessed to have struck the eighty-one-year-old man more than four times that were sufficient enough to result in death due to the skull fracture according to the stipulation of the hospital findings and there is no evidence against the intention.   

• It is predictable when a large bottle is struck repeatedly against the skull of a defenseless person that the person will die due to the laceration of the scalp fracture and cerebral damage as is a knife. The defendant struck the family sized soda bottle multiple times even the victim had been knocked, each strike causing the skull fracture, scalp lacerations, and cerebral damage each time for the victim to be killed .   

• No objection was made as to the testimony of the eyewitnesses who had witnessed the brutal hitting of the senior man.  

Conclusion 

Judgments and order affirmed. 

Commentary 

HEFFERNAN, J.(dissenting)-Because he didn’t have the specific mental purpose of killing but striking the victim’s head and death result is not first degree murder.   

I think ,with a thought of robbing a person, a mugger has a sufficient intention of killing one because his main concern is getting money ‘safely’ even taking away the life of victims.  

[koa-bels]

룰은 룰제목만이 아니라 문장으로 케이스의 홀딩을 적도록 합니다. 코멘트는 자신의 생각을 적도록 합니다. ^^

[김정환연구생]

아 네에 주의하겠습니다. 코멘트 감사드립니다. ^^