People v. Collins

Ross, J. About midday of the 1st of September, 1879, the Eureka stage, en route from Eureka via North Bloomfield to Nevada City, in Nevada County of this State, was stopped when within three and one half miles of its destination by two [294]masked highwaymen, who forced the driver and passengers to alight, and thereupon proceeded to rob them. Among the passengers was William F. Cummings, who had with him a valise containing two bars of gold bullion, each about four inches long, two to three inches wide, and from one and one half to two inches in thickness, and each of the value of from three thousand five hundred dollars to four thousand dollars. When the robbers took hold of the valise, Cummings said it contained all his worldly possessions, and that he would defend it; and thereupon a scuffle ensued between him and them, during which one of the robbers fired upon him with a shotgun, killing him almost instantly. They then fled with the bullion of the murdered man. For that murder Collins, whose alias is Patterson, and one Thorne, alias Dorsey, were jointly indicted on the 26th of October, 1882. They were separately tried. Collins ivas convicted of murder in the first degree and sentenced to be hung. From the judgment of death and an order refusing him a new trial he prosecutes the present appeal, relying upon certain alleged errors in the ruling of the court below.

It appears that nearly two years after the commission of the murder, Collins and one Eoger O’Meara met in the jail at St. Louis in the State of Missouri. Each was incarcerated for a crime alleged to have been committed by him in that State. They had known each other in California, and had been inmates together of the State prison at San Quentin, and, subsequently had been confederates in the commission of other crimes within the State of California. When O’Meara met Collins in the St. Louis jail the conversation between them, according to O’Meara’s testimony in the case at bar, turned upon the robbery and murder of the 1st of September, 1879; and in that conversation Collins confessed to him his own participation in them, detailing with great minuteness all the circumstances in relation to them, from the inception of the unlawful and wicked enterprise, in the pursuit of which the robbery and murder were committed, to and including the disposal of the bullion of the Victim at New Orleans, Louisiana, and Louisville, Kentucky. According to the confession as testified to by O’Meara, Collins, Thorne, and one Crumm, met by appointment in the spring of 1879, at Stockton, and there arranged for a series of robberies, [295]