State v. Kappel

SADLER, Justice.

The defendant was convicted of murder in the first degree and sentenced to death by electrocution. He prosecutes this appeal and asks that the judgment so rendered against him be reversed and a new trial awarded on the single ground that the trial court erred in refusing to submit murder in the second degree as a permissible verdict under the evidence. Hence, the review will be confined to resolving this one question.

The victim of the homicide was Bertha Kappel, wife of the defendant. About 5:30 a. m. on December 18, 1947, she was found dead on a street in the city of…