Denton v. State

• Decision Date: 31 December 1851
• Citation: 31 Tenn. 279
• Parties: DENTON v. THE STATE.
• Court: Tennessee Supreme Court

31 Tenn. 279

DENTON

v.THE STATE.

Supreme Court of Tennessee.

December Term, 1851.

Denton was charged, by indictment in the circuit court of Cannon, with the murder of Sullivan. At the February term, 1851, Anderson, S., judge, presiding, there was a verdict of manslaughter rendered against him by the jury, and a judgment accordingly, from which he appealed in error.

Ready and Keeble, for prisoner; Attorney-General, for the State.

Green, J., delivered the opinion of the court.

The plaintiff in error was indicted in the circuit court of Cannon county for the murder of William Sullivan, and was found guilty of manslaughter, and sentenced to confinement in the penitentiary for two years, from which judgment he appeals to this court.

On the trial it appeared in evidence that the prisoner and the deceased were at a gathering where there were a number of other persons, and while there a quarrel ensued between them, and a blow was struck, when they were separated. Denton then got hold of a chair and threw it at Sullivan. The witnesses did not see whether it struck him or not. Sullivan was then pushed out of the house, and, while out, went round the house. In twenty-five or thirty minutes he returned and complained of being sick, and was put to bed.

The attorney-general asked the witness what Sullivan said about what made him sick, and whether or not he, said Denton, had hit him. The defendant objected to the statements of Sullivan, made after he returned, as to whether he had been hit by Denton, but the court overruled the objection, and the witnesses stated that Sullivan said, “Denton had hit him in the belly”--“that Denton had bursted him open with the chair.”

It appeared in evidence that, on examination, a small red spot was seen on the right side of the abdomen, at the place Sullivan indicated as the injury he had received. The persons present did not regard the injury as of a serious character, but he continued to be sick, and in seventeen days he died. The physician says Sullivan complained of the injury on his abdomen, and that after his death the abdomen was laid open, and under the red spot the large bowel, called the colon, was of a dark or slate color, and there was a hole in it in which a walnut might have been dropped; mortification had taken place, and the bowel had sloughed. He attributed Sullivan's death to the condition in which he found the bowel. It is his opinion the bowel was broken by an external blow with a blunt instrument. There was no appearance of injury except the red spot mentioned.

In his charge to the jury his honor the circuit judge said “that the statements...