State v. Ponce

Riley, Judge:

Upon a conviction of murder in the second degree, the Circuit Court of Logan County sentenced defendant Joe Ponce to confinement in the penitentiary from five to eighteen years. To that judgment, defendant prosecutes this writ of error.

Joe Ponce and Zigmond Stefanski had been good friends for many years. On April 7, 1941, Ponce and four others were engaged in playing a card game known as “rummy” in the village of Whitman, Logan County, West Virginia. The players employed a card-board box on which to deal the cards, and Ponce was seated on a piece of lumber which had been placed…