Public-domain · open source
OpenJurist

14 Del. 564

State v. Miller

Delaware Court of Oyer and Terminer · decided 1892-05-31

Indictment for murder ot .the first degree, for the felonious killing of one Noah Benson, a colored man, living at Delaware City in said County, whose headless body was taken from the basin of the Delaware and Chesapeake Canal at that place on the morning of December 26, 1891.

Good law ✅— No negative treatment on recordhow we know

Decided 1892-05-31

How this case has been cited

Cited by 8 later decisions — most recently March 1995

8 state decisions

3018921900191019201930194019501960197019801990decided

Later decisions citing this case, by decade. The current decade is in progress, and our corpus holds fewer opinions from the most recent years, so the latest bars are undercounted — not a real decline.

View the full empirical analysis of this case →

Grubb, J:

¶1In regard to whether there is sufficient evidence of the corpus delicti to go before the jury; viz., that Noa i Benson is dead and that his death was criminally caused, prior to the date laid in this indictment, or on or about the 26th of November, 1891,—the Court are unanimously of the opinion that we should leave that to the jury to decide, upon all the evidence before! them.

¶2As to the question of venue, the State is bound to show to the *567jury either by direct testimony or by testimony from which the jury may infer it beyond a reasonable doubt, that the crime was committed in this County. At this stage of the case you ask the Court to say from the circumstances already before the jury, that there is not sufficient evidence of the venue to allow this case to go to the jury. A majority of the Court think that this should be decided by the jury and not by the Court, and therefore decline to take the question of venue from the jury. It is for them to say whether the circumstances in this case are sufficient to show that the crime was committed, in New Castle County.

John J. ■Ntcholson, Attorney General, and Branch Ii. Giles, Deputy Attorney General, for the State.Jeter L. Cooper, Jr., for the prisoner.
/14/del/564 · .json · Public domain