Douglass v. State

• Decision Date: 16 March 1926
• Docket Number: 8 Div. 402
• Parties: DOUGLASS v. STATE.
• Court: Alabama Court of Appeals

107 So. 791

21 Ala.App. 289

DOUGLASS v. STATE.

8 Div. 402

Court of Appeals of Alabama

March 16, 1926

Appeal from Circuit Court, Franklin County; C.P. Almon, Judge.

William J. Douglass was convicted of assault with intent to rob, and he appeals. Reversed and remanded.

Williams & Chenault, of Russellville, A.H Carmichael, of Tuscumbia, and Mason Douglass, of Dayton Ohio, for appellant.

Harwell G. Davis, Atty. Gen., and Robert G. Tate, Asst. Atty. Gen for the State.

BRICKEN P.J.

The indictment contained three counts, and there was a general verdict returned by the jury, "Guilty as charged in the indictment."

Numerous insistences as to the sufficiency of the several counts of the indictment were made in the court below, and the rulings of the court on these questions are here urged as being error.

The offense charged was "assault with intent to rob." There is no statutory robbery in this state. The common law prevails in Alabama as to this offense; and robbery, at common law, is an offense against both person and property, and is briefly defined as the felonious taking of money, or goods of value, from the person of another, or in his presence, by violence to his person, or by putting him in fear. The only statute on the subject of robbery in this state is section 5460 of the Code of 1923, and this statute merely prescribes the punishment for the commission of the common-law offense.

Counts 1 and 3 of the indictment follow the form prescribed in Code 1923, p. 480 (form 16), and were sufficient.

By elaborate briefs of counsel it is earnestly insisted that count 2 of the indictment was fatally defective, in that said count charges an assault upon James Hester, who was at the time acting as cashier of the First National Bank of Russellville, Ala., a corporation, with the felonious intent, by violence to his person or by putting him in fear of some serious and immediate injury to his person, to rob said First National Bank of Russellville, Ala., a corporation. The contention is "that an indictment which charges an assault upon 'A.' with intent to rob 'B.' would be absolutely bad." We cannot accede to this proposition as relating to the count of the indictment here. This court judicially knows that a cashier of a bank is the officer thereof who is intrusted with, and whose duty is to take care of, the cash or money of such bank; or, in other words, that the cashier of a bank is the custodian of the funds of such bank, and, by the great weight of authority, the words "taking from the person of another," as used in connection with the common-law definition of robbery, are not restricted in application to those cases in which the property taken is in actual contact with the person of the one from whom it is taken, but include within their meaning the taking by violence or intimidation from the person wronged, in his presence, of property which either belongs to him or which is under his personal protection and control. To constitute robbery it is necessary, of course, that the property taken should be that of some other person than him who takes it, but it is not necessary that it should be the property of the person from whom it is taken. Thus a felonious taking by force has been held to be robbery where the property taken was in the lawful possession of a bailee, agent, or employee of the owner. We regard what has been said as being a sufficient answer to the insistences made in connection with the alleged invalidity of the indictment.

In addition to the plea of "not guilty," the defendant interposed the special statutory plea of "not guilty by reason of insanity."

The following "statement of facts" is quoted from briefs of counsel, and the essential part thereof appears to be borne out by the record:

"Statement of Facts.

"William J. Douglass was born and reared in Russellville, Franklin county, Ala. He was 32 years of age at the time of the alleged offense. Young Douglass is the son of a prominent family and the oldest of several boys, all of whom were well educated, one a doctor, one a lawyer, and two of them school teachers. The defendant was educated in the grammar school and high school of Russellville, and finished his education as a mining engineer in the Michigan School of Mines. All of the evidence in the case touching upon the subject shows that young Douglass had been both boy and man of a most excellent character and habits. Some of his schoolmates, testifying in the case, stated that he was a very bright student, and always led his classes, but that he was peculiar. He was given to isolation, and had few associates, and no bad habits. The evidence shows that young Douglass was stricken as a child with infantile paralysis, that several operations had been performed, but that he was never strong, carrying with him into manhood a badly crippled foot. After his graduation as a mining engineer, and on entering his profession, he found that his crippled condition was such that he was so handicapped that his education as an engineer was practically thrown away. He brooded much over that. The war came on, and his brothers and associates joined the army, but by reason of his physical condition he was rejected, and he became sensitive on that subject. He then entered the oil fields of Scottsville, Ky., together with his father, and lived at Scottsville for two or three years. He was a single man, and lived with a Mrs. Porter. His success in the oil fields was indifferent. His health became generally very poor, and his brooding, sensitiveness, and isolation increased. He was in love with a young lady in Scottsville, and they were engaged to be married. The summer of 1923 came and found him in Scottsville, Ky., a physical and mental wreck.

"As the summer months approached he became irritable, cut his friends, and spent hours upon hours alone, staring into space, brooding constantly over his misfortunes. He condemned himself, passed sentence upon himself, and sought to carry that sentence into effect by self-destruction. One afternoon he went several miles from Scottsville to the river to drown himself, and a party of bathers and merry makers appeared upon the scene and interrupted his intended suicide. This is disclosed by some of the Scottsville witnesses, and by letters which he wrote to his father and to his sweetheart. These letters would melt a heart of stone, and show clearly the insanity of the boy. An incident of importance in this case was the fact that he had borrowed from a Scottsville bank $160 and had executed his note and signed his father's name as security. Both the banker and his father testified that the boy had full authority to sign his father's name to a note at the bank, and the banker testified that he would have loaned the boy the money without his father's signature, but for the rules of the bank. This note was about to come due, and the young man had no funds to pay it. He insanely reached the conclusion that he had committed an unpardonable moral wrong in signing his father's name to that note, and that if his father and mother found it out he would be forever disgraced in their sight. He dwelt upon this in the letter to his father which he left in his room at Scottsville, and in the letter which he had upon his person when he shot himself in the bank. In his letters he referred to this incident as the only wrong he had ever committed except the wrong of being a failure in life. In his diseased mind he determined to prevent his father and mother from knowing this, and concocted an apparently shrewd but impossible scheme to rob the bank at Russellville to get, as he expressed it, a small amount of money, and, failing, to kill himself. Both of these things he attempted to do, and fortunately failed in both.

"The court will read with care the evidence in the case, and will note that the bank which the young man attempted to rob was located, not only in the town of his nativity, and where his father and mother lived, but in a building owned by his father. His fanciful disguise, his assuming to be deaf and dumb, his actions in the bank, all show that it was the shrewd but impracticable scheming of a madman. In the note he handed in to the cashier of the bank he used the language, 'Don't press a button or give any alarm.' He well knew there was no push button system in the building or in the bank. He stated in the note that he only wanted a little money, and he stated to his father in the letter which was on his person that he was not going to steal the money, he was simply going to take it. Crazy as he was, pride and principal still remained and asserted itself."

The further "statement of facts" is quoted from brief of associate counsel for appellant:

"In August, 1923, W.J. Douglass, age thirty-two years, entered the First National Bank, located in a building owned by his father, in his native city, and, after several aimless visits to the cashier's window, returned there and presented to him a lengthy note indicating several things for him and his assistant to do. The cashier and assistant fled from the bank instead of complying with the directions given them. After the departure of the cashier, and after the assistant cashier, apparently, had left the banking room, the defendant fired a shot in the direction of the fugitives, when they were out of sight, and then turned his revolver on himself. He inflicted thereby an almost fatal wound, crushing in the frontal skull on the brain."

There are two prevailing presumptions in this case: (1) The innocence of the defendant. This presumption is evidentiary in its nature, and attends the accused throughout the trial or until his guilt is proven by the required measure of proof and the established rules of evidence. (2) The sanity of the...