State v. Ellis

The defendant was convicted of murder in the first degree in the St. Louis criminal court, and sentenced to be hanged. He appealed to the court of appeals, where the judgment of the criminal court was affirmed.

The opinion of the court of appeals contains the following statement of facts: “There was a house on the Levee in St. Louis called the ‘Red House,’ where negro steamboatmen were accustomed to meet for the purpose of gambling. The defendant Ellis was an employe of the house. On the day of the homicide the deceased, Mack Sanders, had been in the house, had given trouble, and had been put…