Douglas v. State
| Decision Date | 11 December 1942 |
| Parties | DOUGLAS v. STATE. |
| Court | Florida Supreme Court |
Appeal from Circuit Court, Collier County; George W Whitehurst, judge.
E. M. Magaha, of Fort Myers, for appellant.
J. Tom Watson Atty. Gen., and Woodrow M. Melvin, Asst. Atty. Gen., for appellee.
The appellant, Mose Douglas, was indicted for the murder of Daniel C. Hall on December 1, 1941, in Collier County, Florida; the grand jury presented the indictment in open court on January 19, 1942. The appellant was without funds and the lower court adjudged him insolvent and attorney J. L. Junkin represented the defendant at the trial. We fail to find an order in the record made by the lower court appointing Mr. Junkin as counsel for the appellant. Defendant was placed upon trial and by a jury convicted of the crime of murder in the first degree, and from a death sentence entered in the lower court an appeal has been perfected here. Honorable E. M. Magaha, of the Fort Myers Bar, was appointed attorney for the appellant and has perfected this appeal.
The appellant is a colored man, while the deceased was a white man. The record fails to reflect conflicts or disputes in the testimony, but in the application of the law to the facts in controversy counsel for the parties reach different conclusions, as shown by the briefs and oral argument heard at the bar of this Court. The defendant below, when on the witness stand, admitted firing the shot that killed the late Mr Hall. It is contended that the burden of proof rested on the State of Florida to establish premeditated design or the intent of the appellant to kill the deceased, and that in failing to establish or carry this burden as required by law the verdict and judgment entered in the lower court is erroneous.
The appellant, with other colored employees, was working on the farm of Mr. Smoak in Collier County. The appellant had an argument with a colored woman and struck her with an iron pipe and left the field. He met Mr. Smoak and returned to the field with him and trouble arose between appellant and a co-worker by the name of Drummer. He left the field for the second time and obtained a shot gun at the home of Charley Johnson, who lived near by, and was returning to the field to take from Drummer a knife which appellant claimed had been forcibly taken from him by Drummer, employed in the same field. The appellant was returning to the field armed with the shot gun when intercepted by a posse acting as citizens without warrant and comprised of Messrs. Smoak, Hall and other white men about the field, none of whom were officers.
It is shown that Mr. Smoak and the deceased were armed and the appellant hid in some palmettoes and the searching party went through the palmettoes and the deceased passed in a few feet of where the appellant was hiding. It was at this point that the shooting started. Mr. Smoak fired three times at the appellant, but the time thereof with reference to shooting Mr. Hall is not clear from the record. The deceased had a small rifle. The appellant fired on the decreased at close range, killing him instantly. The appellant and the deceased had worked together in the same field and were on good terms, and the record fails to show malice or animus existed between them. The testimony to sustain the premeditated design or intent on the part of the appellant to kill the deceased, if the verdict and judgment is to be sustained, must rest largely on what occurred after the posse found the appellant hidden among the palmettoes, because it is shown that he was on good terms with the deceased and Mr. Smoak, members of the posse.
Section 782.04, Florida Statutes 1941, defines murder in the first degree, viz.:
'782.04 Murder.--The unlawful killing of a human being, when perpetrated from a premeditated design to effect the death of the person killed or any human being, or when committed in the perpetration of or in the attempt to perpetrate any arson, rape, robbery, or burglary, shall be murder in the first degree, and shall be punishable by death.'
The trial court correctly instructed the jury that the burden of proof rested on the State of Florida to establish each material allegation of the indictment to the exclusion of and beyond a reasonable doubt, and the language so employed on the question of premeditated design or intent to kill is, viz.:
The authorities sustain the instructions as given. See Wise v. State, 69 Fla. 260, 67 So. 871; Richardson v. State, 80 Fla. 634, 86 So. 619; Townsend v. State, 95 Fla. 139, 116 So. 7; Powell v. State, 93 Fla. 756, 112 So. 608; Waterman v. State, 121 Fla. 244, 163 So. 569; Madison v. State, 138 Fla. 467, 189 So. 832, and many other cases.
The case of Richardson v. State, 80 Fla. 634, 86 So. 619 involved the sufficiency of the testimony to establish premeditated design or the intent to kill. The dying declaration of the deceased was...
To continue reading
Request your trial
-
Tien Wang v. State
... ... Accordingly, Tien Wang's conviction for first-degree murder is reversed with directions to reduce the conviction to one for second-degree murder and resentence the defendant. See Purkhiser v. State, 210 So.2d 448 (Fla.1968); Sheffield v. State, 73 So.2d 65 (Fla.1954); Douglas v. State, 152 Fla. 63, 10 So.2d 731 ... (1942); Weaver v. State, supra; § 924.34, Fla.Stat. (1981) ... Reversed and remanded with directions ... --------------- ... 1 The defendant's testimony was that he did not intend to kill Kirtley and that he was "confused" and "not of ... ...
-
Snipes v. State
...be included under the indictment of which the appellant stands convicted), which the adduced testimony will sustain or justify. See Douglas v. State, supra. My conclusion, after a careful of all the testimony, is that the evidence adduced is legally insufficient to sustain the verdict and j......
-
Daniels v. State
...he says this Court prevented the defendants from paying the supreme penalty because of lack of proof of premeditation. Douglas v. State, 1942, 152 Fla. 63, 10 So.2d 731; Jenkins v. State, supra, and Taylor v. State, 1945, 156 Fla. 122, 22 So.2d We have carefully reviewed each of those cases......
-
Weaver v. State
...or thing appearing in the record makes it advisable that a new trial be had.', we pursue the course followed by our Supreme Court in Douglas v. State, Supra, and reverse the judgment and sentence entered and imposed on murder in the first degree; and we remand the case to the trial court wi......