Dickinson v. State, 6 Div. 323.

• Decision Date: 11 January 1934
• Docket Number: 6 Div. 323.
• Parties: DICKINSON v. STATE.
• Court: Alabama Supreme Court

152 So. 29

228 Ala. 28

DICKINSON v. STATE.

6 Div. 323.

Supreme Court of Alabama

January 11, 1934

Appeal from Circuit Court, Marion County; R. L. Blanton, Judge.

Thenoist Dickinson was convicted of murder in the second degree, and he appeals.

Reversed and remanded.

Ernest B. Fite, of Hamilton, for appellant.

Thos E. Knight, Jr., Atty. Gen., and Jas. L. Screws, Asst. Atty Gen., for the State.

FOSTER Justice.

The defendant was convicted of murder in the second degree. He pleaded not guilty, and not guilty by reason of insanity.

The evidence for the state tended to show that at a country church, after night services, defendant stuck a knife blade into the heart of deceased, without justification, and caused immediate death. The motive appeared to be that on the way to the church deceased had driven by defendant, who was walking and did not stop the wagon, which was already fully loaded to take on him and his companions. There was evidence that defendant and his companions were drinking, and the theory is that he became peeved with deceased, and for that reason made an unprovoked attack upon him. Defendant also claimed the benefit of those principles of law which prescribe the influence of voluntary drunkenness in fixing the degree of unlawful homicide.

There was evidence offered by defendant from which insanity could have been found by the jury to have afflicted defendant.

The court very carefully and accurately charged the jury in respect to the law of voluntary drunkenness and insanity as affecting responsibility for homicide which was otherwise unlawful.

In order to prove insanity, we do not find in the record where defendant undertook to resort to the improper method of proving it by reputation, or community discussions. But the state, on cross-examination of George Price, a witness for defendant, brought out the fact that he had heard of such talk before the date of the homicide. This, in a measure, also occurred on the cross-examination of the defendant's witness Joe Adams. On the cross-examination of D. W. Dickinson, a witness for defendant, the state brought out the fact that he had not heard there was anything wrong with defendant before the witness moved from that community.

The direct evidence for defendant showed a conversation between Mrs. Hunt, a witness for him, and defendant's father, and between her and her husband, for whom defendant had been employed as a farm hand, as to his mental unsoundness, all before the homicide, and one between Tucker and defendant's mother; but no evidence of general discussions in the community which related to his mental condition. Defendant's father also testified to the conversation with Mrs. Hunt, but said he did not believe he ever talked to Mr. Tucker, another state's witness, about the mental condition of the boy, but that he might have said a time or two that the boy was not right.

In this state of the evidence, the solicitor proved (first) by the preacher, who conducted the service that night, that he had been living ten or eleven miles of defendant for two or three years, during which time he had been conducting meetings at the church, of which he was pastor, and they were attended by defendant regularly, but he never visited in their home, and that he had not observed any mental unsoundness. He then was permitted to prove, over the objection and exception of defendant, that before the killing he never heard any discussion in the community of the mental unsoundness of defendant. The state was also permitted to prove by another witness, Vencit Webb, who lived near defendant in the same community, that he had never known of his family, his father or...