Manhunt. Volume 14, Number 1, February/March, 1966

In response to the deputy coroner’s request to describe the circumstances of Joseph Garcia’s death as he knew them, the youthful patrolman said, “Well, it was Wednesday... night before last... about eleven thirty, and I was walking my beat along Broadway just south of Market. As I passed this alley mouth, I heard a scuffling sound in the alley and flashed my light down it. I saw these two guys struggling, one with a hammerlock on the other guy’s head, and just as my light touched them, the guy with the hammerlock gave a hard twist, the other guy went sort of limp, and the first guy let him drop to the alley floor. I moved in with my night stick ready, but the guy stood still and made no move either to run or come at me. He just stood there with his hands at his sides and said, ‘Officer, this man tried to rob me.’

“I told him to stand back, and knelt to look at the man lying down. Near as I could tell, he was dead, but in the dark with just a flashlight I couldn’t be sure, and I didn’t want to take a chance on him waking up and running away while I went to the nearest call box. So I stayed right there and used my stick on the concrete to bring the cop from the next beat. That was Patrolman George Mason.

“Mason went to call for a patrol car and a doctor while I stayed with the two guys. That’s about all I know about things except when the doctor got there, he said the guy lying down was dead.”

The deputy coroner said, “And the dead man was later identified as Joseph Garcia?”

Patrolman Lutz nodded. “Yes, sir.”

“And the man Garcia was struggling with. Will you identify him, please?”

The policeman pointed his finger at a short, plump man of about fifty seated in a chair apart from the audience and within a few feet of where the jury was lined up along the left wall. He was a quietly dressed man with a bland, faintly vacuous smile and an appearance of softness about him until you examined him closely. Then you suspected that a good deal of his plumpness was muscle rather than fat, and you noticed his shoulders were unnaturally wide.

“That’s him there,” the young patrolman said. “Robert Hummel.”

Just in front of the platform containing the deputy coroner’s bench was a long table, one end pointing toward the platform and the other end toward the audience. On the right side of this table, seated side-wise to it with his back to the audience, sat the assistant circuit attorney in charge of the case. On its left side sat Marcus Prout, one of St. Louis’s most prominent criminal lawyers.

Now the assistant C.A. said, “Patrolman Lutz, I understand Robert Hummel had in his possession a.38 caliber pistol at the time of the incident you just described. Is that right?”

“Well, not exactly in his possession, sir. It was lying in the alley nearby, where he’d dropped it. It turned out he had a permit to carry it.”

Marcus Prout put in. “Officer, was there any other weapon in sight?”

“Yes, sir. An open clasp knife lay in the alley. This was the later established as belonging to the deceased. Robert Hummel claimed Garcia drew it on him, he in turn drew his gun to defend himself, and ordered the deceased to drop the knife. However, the deceased continued to come at him. Hummel said he didn’t want to shoot the man, so he used the gun to knock the knife from Garcia’s hand, then dropped the gun and grappled with him.”

The lawyer asked, “Was there any mark on the deceased’s wrist to support that statement?”

“The post mortem report notes a bruise,” the deputy coroner interrupted, and glanced at the jury.

Marcus Prout rose from his chair and strolled toward the patrolman. “Officer, did the deceased... this Joseph Garcia... have a police record?”

“Yes, sir. One arrest and a suspended sentence for mugging.”

“Mugging is a slang term for robbery with force, isn’t it?”

“Yes, sir. Generally without a weapon. You get a guy around the neck from behind and go through his pockets with your free hand. There’s other methods classified as mugging, but that’s the way Garcia did it the time he was convicted.”

The lawyer said, “Did you draw any inference from the fact that Robert Hummel, with a gun against a knife, used the gun merely to disarm his opponent and then grappled with him with his bare hands?”

The policeman said, “I don’t exactly know what you mean.”

“I mean, did it not occur to you as obvious Robert Hummel’s statement that he did not wish to shoot his opponent was true, and that he went out of his way to avoid seriously injuring Garcia, when under the circumstances he would have been fully justified in shooting the man through the heart? And that Garcia’s subsequent death in spite of Mr. Hummel’s precaution must have been an accident resulting from Robert Hummel exerting more strength than he intended in the excitement of the moment?”