Jackson v. State
| Decision Date | 20 February 1893 |
| Parties | JACKSON v. STATE. |
| Court | Georgia Supreme Court |
Syllabus by the Court.
1. A husband is not justifiable in killing a man whom he knows or believes to be his wife's paramour, when the latter is peaceably working at his daily labor in the field, and the wife is at her home, more than a mile distant. Under these circumstances there is no such urgent and pressing danger of a new act of adultery as to make the killing absolutely necessary in order to prevent it. It is only where there is such absolute necessity that a killing perpetrated to prevent adultery with the slayer's wife is upon the same footing of reason and justice with cases of justifiable homicide expressly enumerated in the Code. The doctrine of reasonable fear as a defense does not apply to any case of homicide where the danger apprehended is not urgent and pressing, or apparently so, at the time of the killing.
2. A request to charge the jury, which has no proper application either to the evidence or to the prisoner's statement should be declined. For this reason, if for no other, it was not error to deny a request couched in these terms: "If you believe from the evidence that when the prisoner came upon the deceased, upon the sight of him he became so enraged at the thought of past or attempted wrongs upon his wife or family that reasons was dethroned by passion, and carried away by such passion, and not in a spirit of revenge; that the defendant, under such influences, killed the deceased,--such killing could not be of a higher grade than manslaughter."
3. Where there is nothing in the evidence to indicate that the killing was not voluntary, and where no charge is requested on that subject, involuntary mans laughter is not an issue in the case, and no allusion should be made to it in charging the jury, even though the prisoner's statement by indirection suggest such a theory.
4. Where there was evidence tending to impeach one of the state's witnesses by contradictory statements as well as by bad character, and the court charged the law applicable to impeachment by the latter means, but omitted, apparently by inadvertence, to mention the former, this is not cause for a new trial; the attention of the court not having been called to the omission by counsel, and the general charge on the subject of conflict and credit of witnesses being full and correct.
5. Where the court charged the jury that they were to pass upon the law and facts both, apply the facts to the law as given them in the charge, and from both together make up a general verdict of guilty or not guilty upon the issue submitted, and in that way judge of both the law and the facts, it was not error to charge also thus:
6. It is not true that, if the jury have any doubt as to which grade of homicide the accused has committed, they should give him the benefit of the doubt, and find him guilty of the lesser grade. Only a reasonable doubt would work this consequence.
7. The verdict was correct, and there was no error in denying a new trial.
Error from superior court, Bibb county; C. L. Bartlett, Judge.
John Jackson was convicted of murder, and a new...
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