Croom v. State
| Citation | 11 S.E. 1035,85 Ga. 718 |
| Parties | CROOM v. STATE. |
| Decision Date | 03 October 1890 |
| Court | Supreme Court of Georgia |
Syllabus by the Court.
1. To slay an officer to avoid being taken into custody, knowing that his object is to make an arrest for felony, committed several months previously, is murder; but done suddenly without knowledge of his purpose or official character, and without malice, it is manslaughter. Belief, or reasonable grounds of belief, would be equivalent to knowledge.
2. A white officer, with a gun and a posse, but without a warrant, attempting at night to arrest a negro felon in the dwelling of his father, was slain, the only words used by the officer indicating official character or a purpose to arrest being, according to some witnesses, "You are mine," or, according to others, "You are my meat;" held that, on the trial of the negro for the homicide, the milder form of expression should not have been recited by the court in charging the jury, without some allusion to the other, the pressure of the case as between murder and manslaughter being upon whether the conduct and language of the officer gave sufficient notice of a purpose to arrest for felony, rather than to molest by mere violence for some lawless object.
From the superior court, Worth county; BOWER, Judge.
Jesse W. Walters, for plaintiff in error.
W. N Spence, Sol. Gen., by D. H. Pope and C. Anderson, Atty. Gen for the State.
Croom, a negro, killed Hamlin, a white man, in August, 1889, and, on the trial of an indictment therefor, he was found guilty of murder, and sentenced to be executed. The evidence made, in substance, the following case: Some months previous to the homicide, (according to a part of the evidence, 11 months; according to another part of it, from 2 to 6 months,) Croom shot a railroad boss named Strickland, (not killing him,) and a warrant issued for his arrest. He absconded and kept out of the way until the night of the homicide, visiting his father's house, which seems to have been his home, only twice during the interval. The warrant was in the hands of the marshal of Ty Ty, one of the villages of the county, who, without delivering it to Hamlin, showed it to him, and told him if he would arrest Croom, he would divide with him a reward of $25, which he (the marshal) had been offered for making the arrest. Hamlin, with a posse of three men, went to the house of Croom's father, in the night-time. Leaving two men outsdie, and keeping the other with him, he knocked at the door for admission, the inmates of the house then being, besides Croom, his father, mother, and sister. The father and mother came to the door, and found there Hamlin, with one of his posse. Hamlin requested the father to let them in, and inquired if anybody was there except home folks. The father answered, "No." They told him they wanted to go in and make a search to see, not saying of whom they were in search, but that they were hunting for a man. They did not say for what they wanted him. Hamlin was armed with a Winchester rifle, and Croom's mother wanted to know of him what authority he had to come in her house. According to her testimony, she said to him: "Mr. Hamlin, where is your warrant for searching my house?" And he held his gun up and said: "Here is my warrant." The father testified that he asked them if they had a warrant or anything with which to search the house, and that Hamlin held up his gun, slapped it, and said: "This is my warrant." The mother, if not the father, gave them permission to enter, and they did so, Hamlin carrying in his gun, and the other man having a pistol in his pocket. They started to go from the main room into a small room, and met the accused coming out. Hamlin said to him: "Halt;" or, "Hello, John." The latter answered: "Yes, sir;" or, "Hello, Mr. Hamlin." Hamlin responded: "You are mine;" or, "John, you are mine." Of two witnesses for the state, one gives the former, the other the latter, form of the response. The mother testified that the response was: "Consider that you are my meat." In her cross-examination she said it was: "You are my meat." The father testified it was: "You are my meat to-night." The accused instantly fired a pistol at Hamlin, the ball hitting him just above the eye, and causing death within a few hours. According to the evidence for the state, Hamlin, when shot, was holding his gun with the muzzle pointing to the floor, and not in a shooting position. The mother testified that the gun was a drawn on the accused as if Hamlin was going to shoot him; that he raised the gun, and fixed to cock it, but she did not know whether it was cocked or not. The father testified that he saw him raise up his gun, and then turned away his head, because he did not want to see his son shot down. After shooting Hamlin, the accused said to his mother: "Get out of the way, I want to get the other one." The man who was with Hamlin, thinking that he himself was shot, ran out of the house, and to the gate, five or six yards from the house. After stopping, he saw the accused on the porch, who forbade his return into the house. The accused then ran off, and made his escape. It is quite certain from the evidence and the statement of the accused, taken together, that while Hamlin and his companion stood at the door, and the conversation between them and the parents of the accused was going on, the accused left the house through the back door, and was halted by one of the posse stationed in the rear of the house, and that he (the accused) turned round and re-entered the house. The man who halted him then ran upon the porch, and cried, "There he is, boys," and immediately afterwards he heard Hamlin accost him, and then heard the pistol fire. A short time before Hamlin was killed, he himself had shot and killed a negro in Ty Ty named Roberts, while trying to arrest him for gambling. This appeared from one of the state's witnesses, and the mother of the accused testified that he had heard of it, and also of the killing of two negroes at some railroad shanties, or at a neighboring village, as to which killing other witnesses testified; but it appeared that Hamlin was not present when it occured. Hamin had acted as bailiff three or four years previously, and was elected as a regular bailiff a very short time before he killed Roberts. The mother of the accused knew that Hamlin was a bailiff, but could not say whether the accused knew it or not. He said, in his statement to the jury at the trial, that he did not know Hamlin was an officer; that, if he was one, he did not know it; that when he, the accused, shot Strickland, Hamlin was no officer. The reason he assigned for shooting Hamlin was that he was afraid of him, and thought Hamlin was going to shoot him, and that it was necessary to shoot to save his own life. Various details, both in the evidence and in the prisoner's statement, have been omitted; but the foregoing is the substance of all that is material. The motion for a new trial, besides the general grounds, sets forth a special ground, assigning error on the charge of the court, the court having charged as follows: "If you believe from the evidence in the case that the officer went there to arrest him, and called him, and told him he was his, and he answered back, or if the officer called his name, and told him he was his, and the officer made no effort to hurt him, and he shot the officer, under these circumstances, it would be murder, although the officer may have had a gun hanging down by his side or in his hands at that time."
1. This instruction hugs the evidence for the state so closely as to leave the jury no room for grading the homicide otherwise than as murder, provided they credited the evidence of the state's witnesses, and accepted the same in its letter. It makes the question, not only of guilt or innocence, but of murder as distinguished from manslaughter, turn upon a single pivot, and upon a part of the evidence, instead of the whole of it. And that the jury must have so understood it, is manifest, for no where else in the charge is there anything to relax this iron-bound rule prescribed to them from the bench. On the contrary, the sentence immediately preceding the one under review reads thus: "If you believe from the evidence that the defendant, at the time he did this killing, had no necessity to do it; if you believe at that time that his life was not in danger; that the circumstances were not such as would make a reasonable man believe that his life was in danger at the time; and if there was no necessity for the killing,--you should find the defendant guilty of the offense of murder." Instead of laying down this narrow rule, the court should have charged that, in the absence of necessity or of appearances to warrant a reasonable belief that it existed, the killing would be unlawful, and would be either murder or voluntary manslaughter; that, if it was done with knowledge or reasonable grounds of belief that Hamlin intended, and was endeavoring, to make an arrest for the felony with which Croom was charged, it would be murder; but if the killing was done suddenly, under the...
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