Smith v. United States

• Decision Date: 03 January 1921
• Docket Number: 3286.
• Citation: 269 F. 860
• Parties: SMITH v. UNITED STATES.
• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — District of Columbia Circuit

269 F. 860

SMITH v. UNITED STATES.

No. 3286.

United States Court of Appeals, District of Columbia.

January 3, 1921

Submitted December 6, 1920.

Appeal from the Supreme Court of the District of Columbia.

Hannis Taylor, Jr., of Washington, D.C., for appellant.

J. E Laskey, Morgan H. Beach, and J. P. Schick, all of Washington D.C., for the United States.

SMYTH Chief Justice.

Smith was convicted of murder in the second degree and sentenced to imprisonment in the penitentiary. There is testimony that at the time of the homicide he was intoxicated, and it is contended that his condition was such that he was incapable of forming an intent, was utterly unconscious of what he was doing, and therefore not guilty of any crime.

There are two assignments of error, both relating to the failure of the court to grant certain instructions requested by the defendant. He asked that the jury be told that drunkenness 'tends to excuse' a crime, 'by negativing the mental capacity necessary for the specific intention known in the law as malice, which is necessary for the commission of the crime of murder in any of its degrees'; that motive was one of the facts for the jury to consider along with the other facts as bearing on the mental condition of the defendant, in order to determine whether the act was due to his mental condition 'as affected by intoxication or otherwise'; that 'intoxication may reduce or wipe out guilt, depending on its degree'; and 'that what would constitute murder in the first or second degree may be reduced to manslaughter by partial intoxication'; also 'that the defendant might be completely excused by intoxication which entirely destroys for the time being the reason and the will.' Thus it appears that all the requests dealt with the effect of the defendant's intoxication upon his mental condition and his ability to form an intent at the time of the homicide.

The court, on its own motion, after stating the contentions of defendant's counsel as outlined in his requests, said to the jury that voluntary intoxication, speaking generally, was 'no excuse or justification for crime,' and that it is only to be considered 'when the evidence in the case tends to show that the condition of the man's mind produced by the intoxication was of such a character as rendered him quite incapable of forming such an intent as is requisite where the charge of murder in the second degree is made'; that if the...