Mutual Life Insurance Co. of New York v. Hillmon

Mutual Life Insurance Co. of New York v. Hillmon, 145 U.S. 285 (1892), is a landmark U.S. Supreme Court case that created one of the most important rules of evidence in American and British courtrooms: an exception to the hearsay rule for statements regarding the intentions of the declarant.Mut. Life Ins. Co. of N.Y. v. Hillmon, . Decided in 1892, the Hillmon case was authored by Justice Horace Gray, and its holding has been codified in Federal Rule of Evidence 803(3), and adopted by many other jurisdictions.

Background The Hillmon lawsuit concerned the enforcement of a life insurance contract and the identity of a man who died of a gunshot wound near Medicine Lodge, Kansas. Sallie Hillmon - a young woman from Lawrence, Kansas - claimed that in late 1879, her husband John had been killed by a firearm accident at a desolate Kansas campsite called Crooked Creek. The three insurance companies issuing a $25,000 policy on John Hillmon's life maintained that he was still alive. In support of their contention that Hillmon was still alive, the insurance companies offered a letter purportedly written on March 1, 1879, by Frederick Walters, a young cigarmaker. In his letter written to his sweetheart, Walters describes meeting "a man named Hillmon" who invited him to travel with him out west to start a sheep ranch. Upon the insurance companies' refusal to issue the $25,000 policy to Ms. Hillmon, she sued the companies for the policy proceeds. The first two Hillmon trials, in 1882 and 1885, produced hung juries. However, the third resulted in a victory for Sallie Hillmon. It was this 1888 verdict that led to the famous Supreme Court decision of 1892 reversing the judgment in her favor. Nevertheless, three more trials ensued, two ending with hung juries and the last in another verdict for Sallie Hillmon, which was once again overturned by the Supreme Court. The ultimate contested factual issue in all of the trials was the identity of a man whose death far predated the availability of twentieth-century methods of identification. After repeated hung juries in the first two trials, the Supreme Court found that Walters' letter should have been admitted into evidence. With this ruling, the Court created an entirely new exception to the hearsay rule for out-of-court statements describing the intentions of a declarant and remanded the decision to the trial court. More than a decade later, the trial court produced a verdict for Ms. Hillmon.

On May 19, 2006—115 years after the Supreme Court's ruling—Professor Marianne Wesson of the University of Colorado Law School, anthropologist Dennis Van Gervenof the University of Colorado at Boulder, and University of Colorado graduate students in anthropology exhumed the corpse in the presence of Hillmon family members and a film crew to try to scientifically determine the corpse's identity. Although the DNA results from the bones discovered by the team were inconclusive, scientific analysis of photographic comparisons of the corpse, Hillmon, and Walters indicated that the disputed corpse was more likely Hillmon than Walters.

John Hillmon John Wesley Hillmon, a Civil War veteran, was born in 1848 in Indiana. In the late 1860s, he moved with his family to a Kansas township called Grasshopper Springs. In October 1878, Hillmon, thirty years old, married a young waitress named Sallie Quinn. Thereafter, the couple set up housekeeping in Lawrence, Kansas.MacCracken, 1968, at 51. Hillmon, an industrious man, had worked as a foreman, miner, brick maker, cowboy, ranch hand, buffalo hunter, and occasional buffalo hide dealer in Kansas, Colorado, and Texas. Despite his many occupations, he had never made much money.See the deposition of John Brown, see Transcript, No. 94, at 342-81. Accordingly, a few weeks after his wedding, Hillmon set off on a journey west with his old friend and working partner John Brown. Hillmon told Sallie that he intended to find some land where they could start a ranch of their own.

Before leaving home, Hillmon purchased $25,000 of life insurance (which would be nearly $500,000 in current dollars) with the help of his wife's cousin, Levi Baldwin.Hillmon, 145 U.S. at 286. The amount of insurance was so large for a man of ordinary means to carry that Hillmon had to go to three different insurance companies to procure four policies totaling $25,000 (one for $10,000 and three for $5,000).

In December 1878, Hillmon and Brown set out west for their journey. They traveled as far as the southwest Kansas town of Medicine Lodge before cold weather eventually drove them back to Wichita together, and then Hillmon back to Lawrence, Kansas. In late February 1879, Hillmon set off again, meeting up with Brown in Wichita and traveling to Crooked Creek on the night of March 16, 1879. The next evening, John Brown reported to a neighbor named Philip Briley that Hillmon had been shot dead at their campsite. The neighbor called the nearest coroner, George Paddock, who inspected the scene of the death and convened an inquest. On March 18, 1879, John Brown testified that he had accidentally shot and killed Hillmon when the rifle he was unloading from their wagon discharged, shooting Hillmon in the head. The corpse was dressed in John Hillmon's clothes and boots.MacCracken, 1968, at 52. At the inquest, witnesses from Medicine Lodge who had been in the company of Brown and Hillmon testified that the corpse was the man they had known as Hillmon. Most of them remembered Hillmon because he had passed through their town on the earlier trip.McNeal, 2009, at 91. On April 10, 1879, the Medicine Lodge inquest returned a verdict of death by misadventure, or accidental death.Lawrence Standard, April 10, 1879, at 2.

Once the body was buried in Medicine Lodge, Sallie requested payment of the life insurance proceeds from the three companies that had issued the policies.Hillmon, 145 U.S. at 286; MacCracken, 1968, at 52. Suspicious, the insurance companies began to investigate the Hillmon claim. At this time, life insurance fraud was not uncommon — there had been several cases in which people had bought large amounts of insurance, killed someone, and disguised the corpse as the policy holder, who would be somewhere in hiding.MacCracken, 1968, at 51; Carleton, 1896, at 53. (In fact, when the Hillmon case reached the Supreme Court, one of the Justices would refer to the case as one of “graveyard insurance,” meaning fraud.)Maguire, 1925, at 711. Believing they were being swindled, the companies dispatched their agents to Medicine Lodge immediately.

The agents insisted that the body be disinterred and returned to Lawrence, after which it was delivered to an undertaking establishment and inspected by dozens of persons who had known John Hillmon in life. The Douglas County coroner convened another inquest. Although performed by the state-employed Douglas County coroner, the County Attorney, and in the presence of Douglas County jurors, this inquest (which the coroner much later admitted) was wholly funded by the insurance companies, who paid all the involved parties.Topeka Daily Capital, February 16, 1895, at 6. The chief controversies at this inquest were the differences between the corpse's and Hillmon's height and teeth, in addition to the smallpox vaccination scar that the corpse carried on its shoulder.MacCracken, 1968, at 53. Sallie Quinn Hillmon and her cousin Levi Baldwin testified that the body belonged to John Hillmon, as did a few other acquaintances. Other witnesses testified emphatically that it was not and could not have been Hillmon. The corpse was five feet, eleven inches tall; some said it could not be Hillmon because Hillmon was at least two inches shorter, but others said he was exactly that height. Witnesses testified that Hillmon had one or more rotten teeth, while the corpse's teeth were excellent. But some witnesses testified that Hillmon too had fine teeth. Moreover, the corpse had a smallpox vaccination scar exactly where Hillmon had been vaccinated, but some of the insurance company doctors said that the scar on the corpse's arm was too fresh to be from the vaccination that Hillmon had received some weeks prior. Ultimately, this inquest, unlike the Medicine Lodge inquest, returned a finding that the death was of a “person unknown,” and had been caused “feloniously by J.H. Brown.”MacCracken, 1968, at 53; Murder Will Out!, Lawrence Standard, June 26, 1879, at 4.

Sallie Hillmon Sallie Hillmon, John Hillmon's wife, was a waitress from Lawrence, Kansas. Sallie Hillmon claimed that, in 1879, her husband John had been killed by a firearm accident at a desolate Kansas campsite called Crooked Creek. It became clear to Sallie that the insurance companies were not going to pay, so she filed suit in 1880.Hillmon, 145 U.S. at 285. Her case went to trial in 1882; it would eventually be tried six times. The Hillmon litigation lasted for almost 25 years, and would be argued in front of the Supreme Court twice. The first two trials, in 1882 and 1885, both produced hung juries. The third trial produced a verdict for Sallie Hillmon, possibly because of the trial judge's exclusion of the insurance companies’ most important piece of evidence: the “Dearest Alvina” letter.Hillmon, 145 U.S. at 287.

Even with the Dearest Alvina letter in evidence, the fourth trial of 1895 and the fifth trial of 1896 ended in hung juries.MacCracken, 1968, at 76-77. In the sixth trial matters became even more interesting with the testimony of a Leavenworth cigar factory owner, Arthur Simmons.Mrs. Hillmon's Evidence to be Finished Today, Leavenworth Times, October 25, 1899, at 4. Simmons testified that he had employed an F. Walters at his cigar making shop two months after Frederick Adolph Walters’ alleged death at Crooked Creek.Claims Walters Was In Leavenworth In May 1879, Leavenworth Times, November 14, 1899, at 4. He produced employment records and identified a picture of Frederick A. Walters as the Walters who was formerly in his employ.Ready for Arguments in the Hillmon Case, Leavenworth Times, November 15, 1899, at 4. This evidence was persuasive to the jury and they returned a unanimous verdict for Sallie Hillmon.MacCracken, 1968, at 77. The insurance companies managed in 1903 to persuade the Supreme Court again to overturn Sallie Hillmon's victory, on less memorable evidentiary grounds. But eventually all of the insurance companies settled with Sallie, for the full face amount of the policies plus accumulated interest.

Frederick Walters The crux of the insurance company's case was a letter headed "Wichita, Kansas, March 1, 1879" and beginning "Dearest Alvina." It appeared to be from Frederick Adolph Walters to his fiancée, Miss Alvina Kasten.Hillmon, 145 U.S. at 288. Walters and Kasten had been sweethearts in Fort Madison Iowa, but Walters had left his Iowa home in the spring of the previous year to pursue his trade as an itinerant cigarmaker.MacCracken, 1968, at 74; Mrs. Hillmon's Evidence to be Finished Today, Leavenworth Times, October 25, 1899, at 4. Alvina Katsen, in a pretrial deposition, swore that she had received this letter from the post office early in March 1879.Transcript, No. 184, at 1778; Was it Walters?, Leavenworth Times, June 29, 1882, at 4. In the letter, Walters wrote that he planned to leave Wichita “with a certain Mr. Hillmon, a sheep-trader, for Colorado or parts unknown to me.”Maguire, 1925, at 709. It was this intention to travel with Mr. Hillmon that was crucial to the 1892 decision. According to Alivina Kasten and members of the Walters family, this was the last correspondence any of them received from Frederick, and they had not seen him since.MacCracken, 1968, at 74.