State v. McQuinn

LEEDY, J.-

[ 396] This is an appeal from a judgment of conviction of murder in the second degree; punishment, a term of 15 years in the penitentiary. The appeal presents the single question of whether the court erred in admitting the written confessions of defendant.

Mary Hammer, the deceased, a spinster, Avas 82 years of age at the time of her death. She was a recluse, living alone in her dilapidated farm home in an isolated neighborhood of Gentry County, amid surroundings amounting to squalor. She was crippled, being unable to walk without the aid of a crutch and cane. Her dead body, stiffly…