State v. Leland

The defendant, Morris Leland, was indicted for first degree murder. He entered a plea of not guilty and also gave notice of an intention to prove insanity. Upon the trial the jury returned a verdict of guilty without recommendation of life imprisonment. The death penalty automatically followed, and the defendant has appealed assigning twenty alleged errors.

The circumstances of the crime, as revealed by the defendant’s confessions, were as follows: At about the hour of a quarter after four on the morning of Friday, August 5,1949, the defendant accosted Thelma Taylor, a fifteen-year-old girl,…