Chappel v. State
| Decision Date | 31 December 1869 |
| Citation | 47 Tenn. 92 |
| Parties | Wyatt Chappel v. The State. |
| Court | Tennessee Supreme Court |
OPINION TEXT STARTS HERE
FROM HICKMAN.
At the August Term, 1869, the prisoner was convicted of murder in the first degree, with mitigating circumstances, and was sentenced to imprisonment for life. He has appealed to this Court. Judge Fielding Hurst, presiding.
RICHARD LYLES, for Chappel.
THOMAS H. COLDWELL, Attorney-general for the State.
The prisoner, and one James Stephenson, were charged by indictment in the Circuit Court of Hickman County, with the murder of Joe Caruthers, a man of color, in June, 1868. The prisoner was tried by a jury of said county at the August Term, 1869, of said Court, and found guilty of murder in the first degree, with mitigating circumstances, upon which he was sentenced to confinement in the penitentiary of the State during his natural life. From said judgment he has appealed in error to this Court.
We have carefully examined the proof in the record, and we could not reverse upon the facts contained in this record; but feel constrained to reverse the judgment of the Court below, for manifest error in a portion of his charge to the jury, and because the Court below failed to state the whole law applicable to the case, defining the offense charged, and all its lower degrees, contained in the indictment: Quarles vs. The State, 1 Sneed, 407;Nelson vs. The State, 2 Swan, 237;Phipps vs. the State, 3 Cold., 344.
The Court, in his charge, seems to have read to the jury sections 4597, 8 and 9 of the Code, which, so far, was proper; but he stopped at that, and gave the jury no explanation of what is necessary to constitute the crime of murder in the first degree, nor of murder in the second degree, other than what is stated in said sections of the Code. Nor did he define to the jury what was murder in the second degree, and what is manslaughter, and the distinction between murder and manslaughter. These explanations and charges the prisoner was entitled to under the laws of the land, and leave the jury to find and say, of what degree and crime the prisoner was guilty, if of any, embraced in the indictment, according to the authorities above referred to.
Upon the defense of an alibi insisted upon by the prisoner in the Court below, the Court charged the jury, “that when the defense of an alibi is set up, the jury should look with the greatest degree of strictness, and bear in mind that the proof necessary to establish the alibi must be...
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State v. Michelski
...may apply, on trial of an indictment for murder, is fatal. Nelson v. State, 32 Tenn. 237; Quarles v. State, 33 Tenn. 407; Chappel v. State, 47 Tenn. 92. All applicable to the evidence in the defense should be set forth in the charge to the jury. Carter v. State, 30 Tex.App. 551, 28 Am. St. ......
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Manning v. State
...v. State, 128 Tenn. 60, 157 S.W. 419; Ford v. State, 101 Tenn. 454, 47 S.W. 703; Lemons v. State, 97 Tenn. 560, 37 S.W. 552; Chappel v. State, 47 Tenn. 92; Wynne v. State, 45 Tenn. 319; Thompson v. State, 24 Tenn. 138; (2) where the victim has been unable to identify the defendant, Ford v. ......
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Christian v. State
...instructions to be given by the trial judge to the jury when an alibi issue has been properly raised. In the early case of Chappel v. State, 47 Tenn. 92, 94 (1869), the following language was held to be reversible "(T)hat when the defense of an alibi is set up, the jury should look with the......