Adams v. State

• Citation: 136 Miss. 298,101 So. 437
• Decision Date: 13 October 1924
• Docket Number: 24096
• Court: United States State Supreme Court of Mississippi
• Parties: ADAMS v. STATE. [*]

101 So. 437

136 Miss. 298

ADAMS v. STATE. ^[*]

No. 24096

Supreme Court of Mississippi

October 13, 1924

Division B

HOMICIDE Instruction denying accused provoking difficulty right of self-defense held erroneous, in view of evidence of abandonment of homicidal intent.

In a murder case it is error to give an instruction for the state denying defendant the right of self-defense if he armed himself with a deadly weapon and provoked the difficulty with intent to kill the deceased, where there is testimony tending to show that defendant abandoned the intent to kill before slaying the deceased, and that the killing was in self-defense.

HON. J Q. LANGSTON, Judge.

APPEAL from circuit court of Jefferson Davis county, HON. J. Q LANGSTON, Judge.

Garfield Adams was convicted of manslaughter, and he appeals. Reversed and remanded.

Reversed and remanded.

Livingston & Milloy for appellant.

We believe that the evidence shows clearly and beyond every reasonable doubt that appellant was about to be killed by the deceased at a time when he, appellant, was going from the deceased, yet the court, under the theory of the state, denied appellant the right of self-defense. We are clearly of the opinion that under the facts of this case, appellant was undoubtedly entitled to the instruction sought. The state by its own evidence had positively shown that appellant had abandoned the first difficulty and that he made the stroke with the knife in his necessary self-defense, and not pursuant to any original intention to kill the deceased.

The court will observe that the state in these instructions merely assumed that appellant armed himself for the purpose of bringing on a difficulty with the deceased, and this assumption was right in the teeth of the evidence for the state.

The jury should have been told in the instruction that if appellant abandoned the difficulty that the right of self-defense was not lost, no matter if he in the first instance provoked it, armed, with the intention then existing of using his knife, if it became necessary to overcome the deceased, and that the killing would have had to be done pursuant to an original intention to kill.

The two instructions given have been many, many times condemned by this court. Herring v. State, 87 Miss. 628, 40 So. 230; Lofton v. State, 79 Miss. 723, 31 So. 420; Cooper v. State, 80 Miss. 175, 31 So. 579; Jones v. State, 84 Miss. 194, 36 So. 243; Pulpus v. State, 82 Miss. 548, 34 So. 2; Prine v. State, 73 Miss. 838, 843; Smith v. State, 75 Miss. 542, 553; Patterson v. State, 75 Miss. 675; Fore v. State, 75 Miss. 732; Garner v. State, 93 Miss. 843, 47 So. 500; Lucas v. State, 109 Miss. 82, 67 So. 851; Williamson, et al. v. State, 115 Miss. 716, 76 So. 637.

F. S. Harmon, Assistant Attorney-General, for the state.

Counsel for the appellant argues with force and vigor that the first instruction granted for the state is erroneous. It is frankly admitted that similar instructions, as pointed out in the brief of counsel for the appellant, have been several times condemned by this court, and, if the instructions here quoted, stood alone, the cases cited in support of appellant's contentions, would doubtless govern here. However, neither this nor any other single instruction can be legitimately considered by itself. Instructions do not stand alone. They are not supposed to be given as hooks upon which to hang a reversal, but as aids to the twelve men in the jury box as they set about arriving at a verdict. The entire group of instructions must be taken together and, looking at them all, the court must ask whether the jury were given proper guidance in their deliberations.

"Instructions are to be construed together as of pari materia, one as modifying another. If construing them thus the law be correctly expounded the judgment will not be reversed because a single instruction taken by itself is too broad in its terms." Mask v. State, 36 Miss. 77.

And so it is that before condemning the first instruction here granted to the state, careful consideration must be given to the seventeen elaborate instructions given on behalf of the defendant. It is insisted that the instruction complained of took away from the appellant all of his rights under a plea of self-defense. The short answer to this contention is that instruction number 16 told the jury that: "If you have a reasonable doubt as to whether the defendant acted in self-defense or not, then you must resolve the doubt in his favor and acquit him."

The instruction complained of is a legal abstraction and as such, of course, should be condemned. Even if it goes further and taken alone, incorrectly advises the jury, then it is submitted that this instruction short, concrete, and unmistakable in language, so correctly advised the jury on the question of self-defense that they could not have been misled in the premises. Furthermore, instruction number 11 begins by telling the jury that "if you believe from the evidence that the defendant was justified in stabbing the deceased," then the subsequent step was immaterial, etc. Here the reference to justification takes care of the defendant's rights under the plea of self-defense. While instruction number 7 tells the jury that if there are two theories arising from the evidence, one favorable and the other unfavorable, and there is any reasonable doubt as to which is true, then the jury must adopt the theory favorable to the defendant and acquit him. The only possible theory justifying the fatal stroke is the theory of self-defense, and here, again, the jury was given a clear-cut and unmistakable guide fully protecting the defendant's rights on this question.

But the complete and all-sufficient answer to the various contentions of appellant's counsel respecting the instructions is found in instruction 13 granted for the defendant which reads as follows: "The court instructs the jury for the defendant in this case that if you believe from the evidence in this case that the defendant had yielded to the entreaties of his friend, Bob Newsom, and was retreating or retiring from the scene of the first altercation without any intention of renewing the altercation, then you must acquit the defendant outright, regardless of every other fact and circumstance in the case, and regardless of whom you may please or displease by your verdict."

This instruction rises before the appellant's counsel as an insurmountable barrier to his success. It is small wonder that the district attorney cried out against this instruction in the trial court. It is small wonder that the district attorney described it as a peremptory instruction for the defendant. The defendant could not possibly have secured a more favorable instruction.

The jury is bound to have found from instruction number 13 that the defendant had not abandoned the first altercation without the intention of renewing it and with this finding of fact which irresistibly follows in the light of the plain language of the instruction, the jury could not have been misled by the instruction complained of. For it is clear that the appellant provoked the difficulty, that he had borrowed this dangerous weapon from another negro and armed himself with it in addition to the small, rusty knife which he carried for ordinary purposes, that he threatened the life of the deceased by saying, as he collared him, that he would cut his damned head off and stating a moment later...