Cheadle v. State
| Decision Date | 29 June 1915 |
| Docket Number | A1937. |
| Citation | 149 P. 919,11 Okla.Crim. 566,1915 OK CR 59 |
| Parties | CHEADLE v. STATE. |
| Court | United States State Court of Criminal Appeals of Oklahoma. Court of Criminal Appeals of Oklahoma |
Syllabus by the Court.
In a prosecution for murder, alcoholic insanity, or mental incapacity produced by voluntary intoxication existing only temporarily at the time of the homicide, is no justification or excuse therefor. To constitute insanity, caused by intoxication, a defense in a trial for murder, it must be insanity caused by chronic alcoholism, and not a mere temporary mental condition.
Insanity though superinduced by excessive and long-continued indulgence in alcoholic liquors and known as "delirium tremens," or "mania a potu" renders a person so afflicted irresponsible for his acts, if it be of such a character as to deprive him of the mental capacity to distinguish between right and wrong, as applied to the particular act, whether he be under the influence of liquor at the time of the commission of the act or not; but, to do so, his affliction must be settled or fixed insanity, not a mere fit of drunkenness. A person, not previously laboring under such a disease or affliction, who voluntarily becomes intoxicated to such an extent and for such a period of time as to cause unconsciousness of his acts, is not irresponsible under the law for the acts done by him while in such mental condition.
Intoxication either voluntary or involuntary, is to be considered by the jury in a prosecution for murder in which a premeditated design to effect death is essential, with reference to its effect upon the ability of the defendant at the time to form and entertain such a design, not because, per se, it either excuses or mitigates the crime, but because in connection with other facts, an absence of malice or premeditation may appear.
Under our Penal Code (section 2313, Rev. Laws 1910), homicide is murder "when perpetrated without authority of law, and with a premeditated design to effect the death of the person killed, or of any other human being," and evidence of intoxication is admissible to show an absence of the premeditated design to kill, for the purpose of determining whether the offense was murder or manslaughter, and a state of intoxication which will reduce homicide from murder to manslaughter in the first degree must be of such character and extent as to render the defendant incapable of entertaining or forming a design to effect death. And the question is for the jury to determine.
A person who commits a homicide while so drunk as to be incapable of forming a premeditated design to kill, if he had formed no purpose to commit the crime prior to the time he became so intoxicated, is not guilty of murder, but is guilty of manslaughter in the first degree.
In a prosecution for murder, the court should submit the case to the jury for consideration upon every degree of homicide which the evidence in any reasonable view of it suggests, and if the evidence tends to prove different degrees, the law of each degree which the evidnce tends to prove should be submitted to the jury; and, where there was evidence of the intoxication of the defendant to the extent of being deprived of the mental capacity to deliberate or premeditate at the time of the homicide, it was prejudicial error to refuse to submit to the jury an instruction in reference to manslaughter in the first degree.
Appeal from District Court, Johnston County; Robert M. Rainey Judge.
Tom Cheadle was convicted of murder, and appeals. Reversed.
Where there was evidence that defendant was so intoxicated as to be deprived of capacity to premeditate, held error, in view of 22 Okl.St.Ann. §§ 837, 916, to refuse to submit to the jury an instruction on manslaughter in the first degree.
Cornelius Hardy, of Tishomingo, for plaintiff in error.
Chas. West, Atty. Gen., and C.J. Davenport, Asst. Atty. Gen., for the State.
The plaintiff in error was convicted of the murder of Tandy Harrell. The information charged the homicide to have been committed by shooting the deceased with a pistol. The court rendered judgment, and the defendant was duly sentenced in accordance with the verdict to imprisonment for life at hard labor. To reverse the judgment the defendant appealed by filing in this court, on March 14, 1913, a petition in error with case-made.
The evidence shows that the defendant and the deceased, Tandy Harrell, were cousins and were, before the night of the tragedy, good friends. It appears that the defendant's father was drunk in the town of Milburn, and his wife asked Jim Helms to take him home; Tandy Harrell went with them. On the way they stopped at Harrell's home and got a bottle of whisky and a quart of alcohol. The old folks went early to bed. Tandy Harrell and Jim Helms were playing pitch, and they were all drinking whisky. During the night the defendant and Harrell went outside and the defendant fired two or three shots with his pistol; they came back into the house and finished drinking another bottle; Helms threw the empty bottle into the fireplace and the defendant pulled his pistol and shot the bottle.
The only person present when Tandy Harrell was shot that was called as a witness for the state was Jim Helms. He testified: That when they were eating in the kitchen the defendant picked up a table knife and a cup and threw them at his sister Lorena. That he also picked up some of the dishes and threw them against the wall. Later he heard the defendant ask Harrell if he could shoot through the door, and Harrell said, "Yes," and he fired a shot. That a little later the defendant fell across the foot of the bed. That he jumped up, and Harrell grabbed him by the wrists and they were scuffling and fell over on the floor, with Harrell on top, and when they let him up he stood there cursing. Harrell said:
"Tom, I don't want you to be mad at me, and I hope you will not be; I taken hold of you to keep you from doing the way you were doing."
The defendant said, "That is the second time you have done me that way, and you won't do it again, God damn you," and fired his gun. Harrell opened the door, and the defendant shot again as he was going out of the door.
A. Allen testified that he saw Tandy Harrell after he was shot, and the defendant was there and said, "Tandy, do you think I had anything to do with it," and Tandy said, "Yes, you shot me, but whisky was the cause of it," and the defendant said, "I never shot you, Tandy."
For the defense Lorena Cheadle testified that she was a sister of the defendant and was 16 years old; that after supper that night they were all playing cards; that Jim Helms and Cousin Tandy tried to get her brother to drink, and he said, "No, Cousin Tandy, I have quit;" that about 12 o'clock her brother commenced drinking. The men drank whisky a while and then alcohol; they kept playing and drinking until about 2 o'clock in the morning; that when the shooting occurred she and her father and her brother, Cousin Tandy, and Jim Helms were in the room, and her father was asleep; that she did not see the shot fired, and did not know who fired it; that the lamp went out; that Jim Helms took her brother's pistol from him about a half an hour before the shooting occurred, and she did not see him give it back; that after the shooting Jim Helms grabbed her, and they went to Jim Helms' house.
Mrs. M. V. Cheadle testified that she was the mother of the defendant; "that before she went to bed, Tandy Harrell and Jim Helms had both been trying to get him to drink, and he would say, "No, thank you, Cousin Tandy; I have sworn off," and Jim Helms would say, "He thinks he is too stuck up;" that she noticed the defendant take one drink.
As a witness in his own behalf the defendant testified in part as follows:
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State v. Sexton, 2003-331.
...producing permanent mental disease amounting to insanity" may relieve defendant of criminal responsibility); Cheadle v. State, 11 Okla.Crim. 566, 149 P. 919, 922 (1915) (recognizing settled insanity due to "excessive and long-continued indulgence in alcoholic liquors, technically called, `d......