Haile v. State

• Decision Date: 31 December 1850
• Parties: HAILE v. THE STATE.
• Court: Tennessee Supreme Court

30 Tenn. 154

HAILE

v.THE STATE.

Supreme Court of Tennessee.

December Term, 1850.

Haile was indicted for murder, in the circuit court of Smith county. The case was submitted to a jury, under the direction of Judge Campbell, and the defendant was found guilty of murder in the first degree, and judgment entered thereupon. From this judgment he appealed.

J. S. Brien and Caruthers, for the plaintiff in error; Attorney-General and M. Brien, for the State.

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

The plaintiff in error was indicted in the circuit court of Smith county, for the murder of J. H. Davis, and upon his trial was found guilty of murder in the first degree.

Upon the trial, there was evidence that the prisoner was intoxicated at the time he committed the homicide. Upon the subject of the defendant's intoxication, the judge told the jury, that “voluntary intoxication is no execuse for the commission of crime; on the contrary, it is considered by our law as rather an aggravation; yet, if the defendant was so deeply intoxicated by spirituous liquors at the time of the killing, as to be incapable of forming in his mind, a design, deliberately and premeditatedly to do the act--the killing, under such a state of intoxication, would only be murder in the second degree.”

It is insisted that his honor did not state the principle upon this subject, as it has been ruled by this court.

In the case of Swan v. The State, 4 Humph. 136, Judge Reese, who delivered the opinion of the court, says: “But although drunkenness in point of law constitutes no excuse or justification for crime, still, when the nature and essence of a crime is made to depend by law, upon the peculiar state and condition of the criminal's mind at the time, and with reference to the act done, drunkenness, as a matter of fact, affecting such state and condition of the mind, is a proper subject for consideration and enquiry by the jury. The question in such case is, what is the mental status? Is it one of self possession, favorable to fixed purpose, by deliberation and premeditation, or did the act spring from existing passion, excited by inadequate provocation, acting, it may be, on a peculiar temperament, or upon one already excited by ardent spirits? In such case it matters not that the provocation, was inadequate, or the spirits voluntarily drank; the question is, did the act proceed from sudden passion, or from deliberation or premeditation? What was the mental status at the time of the act, and with reference to the act? To regard the fact of intoxication as meriting consideration in such a case, is not to hold that drunkenness will excuse crime, but to enquire whether the very crime which the law defines and punishes, has been in point of fact committed.”

In these remarks, the court intended to be understood, as distinctly indicating that a degree of drunkenness, by which the party was greatly excited, and which produced a state of mind unfavorable to deliberation and premeditation, although not so excessive, as to render the party absolutely incapable of forming a deliberate purpose, might be taken into consideration by a jury, in determining whether the killing were done with premeditation and deliberation.

The whole subject was ably reviewed by Judge Turley, in the case of Pirtle v. The State, 9 Humph. 663.

In delivering the opinion of the court, in that case, the judge says, at p. 671: “It will frequently happen necessarily, when the killing is of such a character as the common law designates as murder, and it has not been perpetrated by means of...