Jones v. State
| Decision Date | 04 May 1944 |
| Docket Number | 14839. |
| Citation | 30 S.E.2d 192,197 Ga. 604 |
| Parties | JONES v. STATE. |
| Court | Georgia Supreme Court |
Syllabus by the Court.
1. The sentence in the statement of the accused, on trial for murder, in which he admitted the killing, that 'I lost control of my head,' did not constitute a defense of temporary insanity. But had such a defense been made in the unsworn statement of the defendant alone, it would not have required a charge on that defense in the absence of a timely request.
2. There being no testimony showing temporary insanity of the accused, the court did not err in failing to charge the jury on the law of temporary insanity, as contended in ground 2 of the amended motion for new trial.
3. Where the court charged, 'It does not mean a doubt arbitrarily created in the mind of a juror for the purpose of finding an excuse to acquit,' this excerpt is not subject to the attack that it tended to make the jury believe that the court would look upon a verdict of acquittal as unjustified, when the excerpt contains less than half a sentence, the remainder of which fairly explains what the exerpt means, and this charge was preceded immediately with an instruction to acquit the accused unless the State had established by proof his guilt beyond a reasonable doubt.
4. The evidence would not have authorized a verdict of justifiable homicide. But cross-examination of the State's witnesses unsuccessfully attempted to show that the deceased had a weapon. The charge on justifiable homicide gave the defendant the benefit of a defense to which he was not entitled, and did not tend to destroy other defenses, and the court did not err in so charging.
5. An admittedly correct charge, to the effect that the jurors are the exclusive judges of the credibility of witnesses, is not erroneous because it fails to charge also that they are likewise the judges of the defendant's statement. Elsewhere in the charge the court instructed the jury that they could give the defendant's statement such credit as they thought it entitled to and could believe it in preference to the sworn testimony.
6. Where the uncontradicated evidence and the defendant's statement showed that the accused did the killing as alleged in the indictment for murder, and neither showed circumstances of justification or mitigation, and where it also appears without dispute that the killing was at the home of the deceased who lived on a named person's place in Clay County, and the trial was in Clay County, the verdict of guilt of murder without recommendation is supported by the evidence, and the venue was shown to be in Clay County Georgia, the place of trial.
John Jones was convicted for the murder of Cora Carter. The State's witness, Lorena Jones, testified that she was the daughter of Cora Carter, and that on October 3, 1943, she her baby, and her mother were sitting on the porch when the defendant came there with Gay Feaster. Feaster was driving a car. The defendant and Judge Guilford and Head McBride were riding in Feaster's car. John Henry Carter, brother of the witness and son of the deceased, was standing on the side of the car as it drove up. When the car stopped, John Henry Carter got off and was standing on the ground talking to the men in the car. The defendant was sitting in the back seat and asked the driver to let him get out. The driver stopped, the defendant got out, walked to about the end of the porch, and said, 'God damn' something. She did not know what he said. She saw him pull out a pistol and she jumped up with the baby and moved to one side. He shot one time and hit her mother. Her brother, John Henry, jumped up on the porch, put his arms around his mother, and the defendant shot him. The deceased did not fall or stay in the chair after she was shot. She jumped and went to the end of the porch, jumped off the porch, went around the house, and came back as far as the porch and fell. Guilford met the deceased and said something about getting her to a doctor, but she fell right there at the porch. She lived a few minutes after she was shot. She never said a word. She was not trying to hurt the defendant when he shot. She had no weapon, knife or pistol or anything. She was not trying to hurt or bother the defendant. They carried John Henry Carter to the hospital where he stayed only the next week. After the defendant had done the shooting, he ran straight across the field in front of the house. He did not shoot but twice then, but he had been to the house about 9 or 10 o'clock that morning and shot straight up two times. The first time he came to the house, the deceased was there, sitting in her room, and the defendant came to the door, cursed, and pulled out his pistol, and told the deceased that if she breathed loud he would kill her. The witness' sister told the defendant to go home, that he was drunk. He left and went down to another house and shot two times down there. When he came back, he came in the car. All this happened in Clay County in October, 1943. On cross-examination, she testified that her mother lived on Will McKemie's place. The shooting took place on Will McKemie's place. She had known the defendant ten or fifteen years. He had been at the same place during that time, working with Will McKemie. He moved off once but came back. She could not say exactly how far the defendant lived from her mother, the deceased. It was down the road and could be a mile but might not be that far. She did not know how long her mother had been going with the defendant. He had been there before when the witness was visiting. The witness had been at her mother's lots of times when the defendant was there also. Her father is dead. The defendant is a married man and was living with his wife at the time he killed the witness' mother. He had about six or seven children. His wife had been in a hospital about two years before the shooting, but she was out of the hospital at that time.
Judge Guilford, Gay Feaster, and John Henry Carter, testifying for the State, corroborated the testimony of Lorena Jones as to the killing.
The defendant made the following statement: The defendant, John Jones, excepts to the judgment overruling his amended motion for new trial.
Zach Arnold, of Fort Gaines, for plaintiff in error.
R. A. Patterson, Sol. Gen., of Cuthbert, Hooper & Miller, of Atlanta, T. Grady Head, Atty. Gen., and Victor Davidson, Asst. Atty. Gen., for defendant in error.
1. Special ground 1 of the motion for new trial excepts to the court's failure to charge on the law of 'temporary insanity.' It is insisted in this ground that the issue of temporary insanity was made by a sentence in the defendant's statement, to wit, 'I lost control of my head.' In the first place, this statement of the defendant does not show any element of temporary insanity. As ordinarily used, this expression would imply that the defendant, because of anger or excitement, lost control of himself. It in no wise indicates an unsound mind, and, hence does not raise an issue of temporary insanity. However, if by any interpretation it could be construed as having made such an issue, that issue made by the defendant's statement alone would not require a charge thereon in the absence of a timely request. Counsel for the movant recognizes this well established rule, but assails the soundness of the rule and specifically requests us to review decisions by this court sustaining and applying the rule, aggregating about seventy-five in number, beginning with Downing v. State, 66 Ga. 110, and ending with Jester v. State, 193 Ga. 202, 17 S.E.2d 736, together with any other decision which sustains the rule. In support of this request, it is urged that no solid basis or justification for such a rule can be found, and that it deprives the defendant of the benefit of a defense which he is able to make only by his unsupported statement. The long array of decisions which it is sought to have...
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...entitled is not injurious to him. Geer v. State, 184 Ga. 805, 193 S.E. 776; Walton v. State, 190 Ga. 746, 10 S.E.2d 755; Jones v. State, 197 Ga. 604, 30 S.E.2d 192. There is nothing ruled to the contrary in Wafford v. State, 163 Ga. 304, 136 S.E. 49; Davis v. State, 190 Ga. 100, 8 S.E.2d 39......
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