State v. White

Appellant was charged by indictment in the city of St. Louis with murder in the first degree by killing one Pinckney Hollis by means of blows with a hatchet on the head. Upon trial appellant was found guilty as charged and his punishment was fixed at death. From the sentence and judgment he has appealed.

Pinckney Hollis was about seventy years old, and was a man of color. Appellant, Emerson White, is about twenty-nine years old and also is of color. The killing occurred on January 1, 1930, in a one-room house in the rear of 2641 Pine Street, St. Louis, where Hollis lived alone. Appellant…