Hargroves v. State

• Decision Date: 16 November 1934
• Docket Number: No. 10158.,10158.
• Parties: HARGROVES. v. STATE.
• Court: Georgia Supreme Court

177 S.E. 501

HARGROVES.

v.STATE.

No. 10158.

Supreme Court of Georgia.

Nov. 16, 1934.

Syllabus by the Court.

1. Rulings on a challenge to the array of the trial jurors cannot be properly asserted as grounds of a motion for new trial.

2. It is not proper for the court to charge the jury upon the law of a theory of defense which has been abandoned by the accused.

3. One is not criminally responsible where, though he has reason sufficient to distinguish between right and wrong, as to a particular act about to be committed, yet, in consequence of some delusion, the will is overmastered and there is no criminal intent, provided that the act itself is connected with the peculiar delusion under which he is laboring.

[177 S.E. 562]

4. An admission of the accused in open court, made as a part of his statement on the trial, may be treated by the jury as direct evidence of that fact.

5. Where the law applicable to the case is fully covered by the general charge to the jury, it is not reversible error to refuse a request to give a specific charge to the same effect.

6. The ruling of the court on the admissibility of evidence, as complained of in ground 12 of the motion for new trial, was not cause for reversal.

7. Certain assignments of error were abandoned by the plaintiff in error, and those not specifically dealt with are without merit. The verdict was authorized by the evidence.

Error from Superior Court, Effingham County; Wm. Woodrum, Judge.

Robert, alias Dobbs, Hargroves was convicted of murder, and he brings error.

Affirmed.

Perry Brannen and Bright, Theus & Bran-nen, all of Savannah, for plaintiff in error.

W. G. Neville, Sol. Gen., of Statesboro, M. U. Yeomans, Atty. Gen., and B. D. Murphy and Jno. T. Goree, Asst. Attys. Gen., for the State.

HUTCHESON, Justice.

Hargroves was convicted of the offense of murder. His motion for new trial was overruled, and he excepted.

1. No exception pendente lite was taken to the ruling of the court on the challenge to the array of jurors, but this ruling was assigned as error in the motion for new trial and in the bill of exceptions. In this state a ruling of the trial judge upon such a preliminary issue cannot be considered where no exception pendente lite was reserved and the final bill of exceptions was not filed in time for the assignment of error to be considered as a ground of a motion for new trial. This court can consider only such exceptions as were taken within twenty days before the tendering of the bill of exceptions, where no exceptions pendente lite were taken. Hern-don v. State, 178 Ga. 832, 174 S. E. 597; Jones v. State, 130 Ga. 274, 60 S. E. 840; Williford v. State, 121 Ga. 173 (2), 48 S. E. 962; Whit-ton v. Barrow, 159 Ga. 57, 124 S. E. 874; Ben-ford v. State, 18 Ga. App. 14 (4), 88 S. E. 747.

2. The accused made a statement shortly after his arrest, in which he confessed the homicide, but claimed that the killing was done in self-defense. This statement was in troduced in evidence by the state; but the accused, in his statement to the jury, repudiated his former statement and abandoned his claim of self-defense. Therefore it was not necessary or proper for the judge to charge the jury on the law relative to such defense. The accused cannot complain of a refusal to. instruct the jury on a theory in his interest in direct conflict with his own statement made in open court.

3. Error is assigned on the following charge of the court: "The question is this-- notice this, now, gentlemen: Was the defendant at the time of the commission of the alleged crime, as a matter of fact, afflicted with a disease of the mind, so as to be insane? If such be the case, did he know right from wrong as applied to the particular act in question? If he did not have such knowledge, he is not legally responsible; if he did have such knowledge, he may nevertheless not be legally responsible if the two following conditions which I will now name you concurred: first, if by reason of the duress of such mental disease he had so far lost the power to choose between right and wrong, and to avoid doing the act in question, as that free agency was at the time destroyed; second, and if, at the time the alleged crime was committed, the act perpetrating the crime was so connected with such mental disease in the relation of cause and effect as for such mental disease to have been the sole cause of the commission of said alleged crime. If the two conditions that I have named occurred at or during the time of the homicide, you should not convict the defendant, although you may believe that the defendant did know right from wrong as applied to the commission of the homicide in question." The question of delusional insanity has often been discussed in this court, but no better definition or explanation of it has been made than the ruling in Roberts v. State, 3 Ga. 310, where it is said: "If a man has reason sufficient to distinguish between right and wrong in relation to a particular act about to be committed, he is criminally responsible. An exception to this rule, however, is, where a man has reason sufficient to distinguish between right and wrong as to a particular act about to be committed, yet in consequence of some delusion, the will is overmastered and there is no criminal intent. Provided that the act itself is connected with the peculiar delusion under which the prisoner is labouring." That ruling has been consistently followed by this court. Where only the question of right and wrong is involved, it is of course unnecessary to deal with the exception mentioned; and it will be found

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