State v. Powell

During the early evening of April 28, 1945, Mike Slykhuis was mortally wounded by the pistol fire of his stepfather-in-law, Marion Powell. He died the next day and Powell was indicted and tried for murder. He was convicted of murder in the first degree and sentenced to life imprisonment. In his appeal he challenges the sufficiency of the evidence to sustain the verdict, so we will first examine that evidence to see if it supports the verdict.

Mike Slykhuis was about thirty years old. He and his wife, Sylvia, lived on á farm near Knoxville, Iowa. Sometime before April'28, 1945, Sylvia wrote to…