Allison v. United States

• Court: U.S. Supreme Court
• Citation: Allison v. United States, 160 U.S. 203, 16 S.Ct. 252, 40 L.Ed. 395 (1895)
• Decision Date: 16 December 1895
• Docket Number: No. 693,693
• Parties: ALLISON v. UNITED STATES
• Writing for the Court: FULLER

160 U.S. 203

16 S.Ct. 252

40 L.Ed. 395

ALLISON

v UNITED STATES.

No. 693.

December 16, 1895.

John Allison, some 20 years old, was indicted for the murder of his father, William Allison, on the 5th day of January, 1895, at the Cherokee Nation in the Indian country, in the Western district of Arkansas, found guilty by a jury, under the instructions of the court, and sentenced to be hanged, whereupon he sued out this writ of error.

The evidence tended to show that the Allisons resided, up to the year 1893, in the state of Washington; that the parents had been divorced; that the father had repeatedly threatened the lives of the members of his family, and for an assault upon one of his sons and his son-in-law, by shooting at them with a pistol, had been sent to the penitentiary for a year; and that thereupon the family left the state of Washington, and came to the Indian country. In about a year the father appeared, first at Hot Springs, Ark., where one daughter had located, and then in the neighborhood of the other members of the family in the Indian country; and at once began threatening the lives of the entire family, and particularly that of his son John. A great variety of vindictive threats by the deceased in Washington, at Hot Springs, and in the Indian country was testified to.

Evidence was also adduced that on one occasion he came to the house where the mother and her children were living, and demanded to see the children, who (except John, and one whom he had seen) were not at home, and he then wished to see their mother, who objected to meeting him; that he persisted, whereupon his son John, who had a gun in his hand, told him he must leave, and the father dared John to come out, and he would fight him outside, but John answered that he did not want any trouble with him, only wanted him to stay away from there, and the deceased replied, 'God damn you! I will go off and get a gun, and kill the last damned one of you;' that he subsequently told his son-in-law to tell John Allison 'that he would blow his God damned brains out the first time he seen him; told him to tell him he would kill his mother and the entire family;' that the day after this occurrence John Allison and his mother made an affidavit to get a peace warrant for William Allison, and on that occasion John told the prosecuting attorney that the old man threatened his life, and he thought he was in danger, and asked him if he killed the old man what would be done with him, and he replied that 'if the old man came to his house, and raised a racket, and tried to carry out his threats, that he told me he had made on him, I told him he would be justified in doing it,' but that he must not go 'hunting the old man up, and trying to kill him,' and that John said, 'I will not bother him; if he will let me alone, I will let him alone;' and that this was five or six days before the killing. The evidence further tended to show that the deceased had been in the habit of carrying a pistol; that he stated that he had one; that on New Year's day he threatened one of the witnesses with that weapon, and another witness testified to catching a glimpse of it once when he put his hand around to his hip pocket; but that he had no pistol on him when he was killed. The deceased was staying at the house of one Farris, and a witness testified in rebuttal to conversing with John when he was 'warming' on one occasion at the barn,—presumably Farris' barn,—and asking him why he did not go up to the house, and he said he did not want to go up there; that he was afraid he and his father would have some trouble; that he was afraid his father would hurt him; and that he was going to kill him just as quick as he caught him away from the house.

As to the circumstances immediately surrounding the homicide, the defendant testified that he and a man by the name of Rucker had killed a deer near Rucker's the day before, and that he had promised Rucker to come back the next day to hunt for others, and was riding by Farris' place, which was on the road to Rucker's, with his gun in his hand, on that errand, on the morning of January 5th, when he saw a person whom he took to be his brother Jasper up at Farris' house that this person turned out to be Farris with his brother's coat on; but he stopped at the stable, thinking that his brother would come down that way, as he had learned from his sister that his brother was to be at the place at that time for the purpose of removing some household goods; that he did not go up to the house, because he did not want to meet his father; that shortly after he arrived at the barn his father came through the gate, and he stepped to one side, to let him go into the barn if he wished to, but deceased did not go towards the door, came straight towards him, and when he got a few feet from him said, 'You have got it, have you?' and threw his hand back as if he was going to get a pistol,—'made a demonstration that way,'—and that this demonstration and the threats he had made led defendant to believe that he was going to draw a pistol, and he fired; that he fired three shots, but none after the deceased fell. Defendant was corroborated by Rucker and others in many particulars, but contradicted by the government's witnesses in respect of firing after his father was down; they testifying that he fell at the first shot.

W. M. Cravens, for plaintiff in error.

Mr. Whitney, Asst. Atty. Gen., for the United States.

Mr. Chief Justice FULLER, after stating the facts as above, delivered the opinion of the court.

It is claimed on behalf of defendant that the homicide was excusable, because committed in self-defense, in that, his life having been repeatedly threatened by deceased, when he saw him on this occasion moving his hand as if to take a pistol from his hip pocket, he believed, and as a prudent man might reasonably have believed, at that time, and under those circumstances, that he was in imminent and deadly peril, which could only be averted by the course he pursued; or that, at the most, he could only be found guilty of manslaughter for acting under an unreasonable access of fear, but without malice.

The threats were conceded, and there was evidence that the deceased was in the habit of carrying a pistol; that he had recently carried one in his hip pocket; that he had sent word to defendant that he should kill him on sight; that defendant had started on a hunting expedition that morning, and that his stopping at Farris' place was accidental; but the facts that he at first stepped away from his father, and that the latter advancedon him, and made the threatening demonstration as if to draw a pistol, which the defendant knew he was accustomed to have upon him, apparently depended on defendant's testimony alone. The question for the jury to determine from all the facts and circumstances adduced in evidence was the reasonableness of the belief, or fear, of the existence of such peril of death or great bodily harm as would excuse the killing. And it was for the jury to test the credibility of the defendant as a witness, giving his testimony such weight, under all the circumstances, as they thought it entitled to, as in the instance of other witnesses, uninfluenced by instructions which might operate to strip him of the competency accorded by the law.

We repeat what was said by Mr. Justice Shiras, speaking for the court, in Hicks v. U. S., 150 U. S. 442, 452, 14 Sup. Ct. 144: 'It is not unusual to warn juries that they should be careful in giving effect to the testimony of accomplices, and perhaps a judge cannot be considered as going out of his province in giving similar caution as to the testimony of the accused person. Still it must be remembered that men may testify truthfully, although their lives hang in the balance, and that the law, in its wisdom, has provided that the accused shall have the right to testify in his own behalf. Such a privilege would be a vain one if the judge, to whose lightest word the jury properly enough give a great weight, should intimate that the dreadful condition in which the accused finds himself should deprive his testimony of probability. The wise and humane provision of the law is that 'the person charged shall at his own request, and not otherwise, be a competent witness.' The policy of this enactment should not be defeated by hostile intimations of the trial judge, whose duty it is to give reasonable effect and force to the law.'

Similar views have been expressed in many cases in the state courts.

In Com. v. Wright, 107 Mass. 403, it was held that there was no presumption either way as to the truthfulness of a defendant's testimony in a criminal case, and that his testimony is to be considered and weighed by the jury, taking all the circumstances of the case and all the other evidence into consideration, and giving such weight to the testimony as in their judgment it ought to have.

'It cannot,' observed Scholfield, J., in Chambers v. People, 105 Ill. 409, 'be true that the evidence given by the defendant charged with crime is not to be treated the same as the evidence of other witnesses. It could not even be true, as a universal proposition, that, as matter of law, it is not to have the same effect as the evidence of other witnesses. Many times it certainly cannot have that effect, but there are times when it can and should; and of this the jury are made the judges.'

And see Greer v. State, 53 Ind. 420; Veatch v. State, 56 Ind. 584; Buckley v. State, 62 Miss. 705; State v. Johnson, 16 Nev. 36.

Among the errors assigned in the present case was one to so much of the charge as is given below in italics, in respect of which a sufficient exception was preserved. The trial judge said:

'You have heard in argument here,—incidentally dropped, no doubt, because these things have been repeated here so often in this court that every child knows what the law of self-defense is, that if a man thinks he has a right to...