Graham v. State
| Decision Date | 12 February 1976 |
| Docket Number | No. 30444,30444 |
| Citation | 223 S.E.2d 803,236 Ga. 378 |
| Parties | Ernest R. GRAHAM v. The STATE. |
| Court | Georgia Supreme Court |
Smith & Harrington, Wilton D. Harrington, Eastman, for appellant.
Fred M. Hasty, Dist. Atty., Macon, Arthur K. Bolton, Atty. Gen., Julius C. Daugherty, Jr., Staff Asst. Atty. Gen., Atlanta, for appellee.
Appellant Ernest Graham was tried before a jury in January, 1975, on an indictment in Crawford Superior Court charging him with the murder of his wife. He was found guilty and sentenced to life imprisonment. His motion for new trial was overruled in July, 1975, and he has appealed to this court from his judgment of conviction, sentence and denial of a new trial.
Appellant and his wife owned and operated an establishment known as 'Ernie's Truck Stop.' They also resided at that location. On the evening of March 3, 1974, about 9:00 P.M., several men gathered at the truck stop to play poker in one of the back rooms. Appellant, however, remained in the kitchen most of the evening and entered the adjoining room, where the men were playing cards, only occasionally in order to serve drinks or food. Mrs. Graham also did not participate in the poker game, but she stayed in the playing room throughout the night in order to receive a 'cut of the pot' from time to time as compensation for the use of the premises.
Shortly after midnight the poker game was interrupted by the sound of a pistol being fired in the kitchen. The bullet passed through the kitchen door into the roon of card players and wounded one of the men who was sitting at the card table. Mrs. Graham, who also had been sitting at the table, immediately rushed toward the door which at that time was rattling as though someone were trying to open it. When she reached the door, it opened and she yelled, 'Ernie.' Appellant, who was standing in the doorway, shouted, 'I warned you goddamit, I warned you goddamit,' while he repeatedly fired at her with a pistol.
As Mrs. Graham fell to the floor mortally wounded, appellant put the gun in his pocket and walked back into the kitchen. He soon returned without the gun and told two of the men to put Mrs. Graham on a small bed located in a corner of the room. When they placed her on the bed, appellant hugged her and said, 'Ruby, I'm sorry.' Thereafter, however, appellant seemed to become confused and distraught, crying and asking people, 'what's the matter with Ruby,' and then, 'who killed Ruby?' The men who were present at the truck stop testified that relations between appellant and his wife appeared to be normal that night; they did not witness any argument nor did they detect any underlying tension between them. Soon after he began investigating the scene, the deputy sheriff found a pistol lying in a corner of the kitchen under a pile of paper bags. The State Crime Laboratory determined that the pistol was the one used to kill Mrs. Graham but the laboratory was unable to recover any legible fingerprints from the weapon.
At trial the appellant based his defense on the contention that he was insane at the time of the homicide. The trial court charged the jury on the defense of insanity as provided by Code Ann. § 26-702, and also charged that 'the act itself may be so utterly senseless and abnormal as a furnish satisfactory proof of the diseased mind.' Appellant, however, argues that the trial court erred by refusing to give his request to charge on delusional compulsion (Code Ann. § 26-703).
In order for the defense of delusional compulsion to be available in a trial for murder there must be evidence that the defendant was laboring under a delusion, that the act itself was connected with the delusion and furthermore that the delusion would, if true, justify the act. Brown v. State, 228 Ga. 215, 217(2), 184 S.E.2d 655 (1971); see also, Brannen v. State, 235 Ga. 505, 506(2), 220 S.E.2d 264 (1975). The evidence relating to appellant's sanity must, therefore, be reviewed in order to determine if the requested charge on delusional compulsion should have been given by the trial court.
Appellant was committed to Central State Hospital in 1968 as a 'mentally ill person.' He was subsequently released, but returned to Central State about nine or ten times thereafter. His last stay in Central State Hospital occurred in 1970. Dr. Lundell, who was on the board which committed appellant in 1968, testified that appellant was diagnosed at that time a 'suffering from chronic alcoholism and that he needed to be hospitalized to make a final diagnosis if there was anything else wrong with him.' Appellant, himself, admitted in his testimony at this trial that his initial admission to Central State Hospital and all of his later admissions were due to his alcoholism.
Dr. Bullock, a psychiatrist, was appellant's principal witness in support of his insanity defense. Dr. Bullock testified that in addition to his alcoholism appellant 'has been delusional and perhaps suicidal and could be described as psychotically depressed for periods of time during the last several years.' In the opinion of the psychiatrist the shooting was attributable to a reoccurrence of a delusion appellant had suffered while he was at Central State Hospital in 1968. The delusion had taken the form of a belief that his wife was in a closet at the hospital smothering to death.
Dr. Bullock testified that on the night of the shooting, Also, the fact that he said, 'Ruby, I warned you goddamit,' could be interpreted as a reprimand for getting herself in that predicament and being endangered.
In explaining the basis for his opinion of appellant's mental state at the time of the homicide, the psychiatrist considered it significant that the appellant was especially concerned about his wife's health on the day of the shooting. Mrs. Graham had been in poor health for a number of years prior to her death, but on the day of the shooting her condition appeared to appellant to be worse than usual.
There was also evidence that appellant consumed some beer and whiskey in the late afternoon or early evening before the poker game. However, everyone who observed him later that evening testified that he did not appear to be intoxicated. In addition, Dr. Bullock commented on appellant's inability to remember the events of the evening. He testified that, 'It would have been impossible or extremely difficult for (appellant) to recall what occurred when he was in this irrational state of mind.'
Appellant, who appeared as a witness in his own behalf, testified that he was sitting at the kitchen table, asleep with his head on his arms when he heard a loud noise. He jumped up and ran to the card room door where he saw his wife standing in the doorway. She called to him, 'Help me, Ernie,' and he put his arms around her as she fell to the floor. He then asked severed others in the room to help him place her on the bed. Appellant testified that he did not see a gun that night and denied owning a pistol.
From this review of the testimony adduced at the trial, it clearly appears that there was evidence of the first two elements of the defense of delusional compulsion, i.e., that appellant was laboring under a delusion at the time of the shooting and his act was connected with, and in response to, the delusion. However, the fact that the exact nature of the delusion is not known renders more difficult the determination whether there was evidence of justification, the third element of the defense.
The salient feature of the delusion described by the psychiatrist was appellant's perception of his wife as being in 'desperate danger' of losing her life. Furthermore, the psychiatrist interpreted the appellant'a actions as an attempt to extricate his wife from mortal danger. If these circumstances had actually occurred appellant may have been justified in using deadly force to prevent his wife's death (see Code Ann. § 26-902(a)), but the situation is complicated by the fact that appellant fired a shot through a closed door and then reprimanded and shot his wife several times after she became clearly visible through the open doorway. There is no evidence in the record that appellant's delusion prevented him from realizing that he was shooting through a closed door or that he was shooting at his wife. Under the evidence in this case, the jury would not have been authorized to find that appellant's delusion justified his act of shooting his wife. See Mars v. State, 163 Ga. 43, 51(4), 135 S.E. 410 (1926); McKinnon v. State, 51 Ga.App. 549, 556, 181 S.E. 91 (1935). In our opinion, the trial court did not err in refusing to charge on the defense of delusional compulsion.
Appellant contends that the trial court erred by refusing to admit into evidence his exhibits D-2 through D-11 which...
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