Keeton v. Commonwealth

• Decision Date: 28 January 1892
• Citation: 92 Ky. 522,18 S.W. 359
• Parties: Keeton v. Commonwealth, (two cases.)
• Court: Kentucky Court of Appeals

18 S.W. 359

92 Ky. 522

Keeton v. Commonwealth, (two cases.)

Court of Appeals of Kentucky.

January 28, 1892

Appeals from circuit court, Rowan county.

"To be officially reported."

Indictment of John P. Keeton for assault and robbery. Defendant appeals from a judgment rendered upon a verdict of conviction. Reversed.

Pryor J.

The appellant was tried and convicted under two indictments for robbery found by the grand jury of Rowan county, and his punishment fixed in each case by confinement in the state-prison for the period of two years. He has brought the case to this court for revision. The facts show that the accused in July, 1889, and when in an intoxicated condition as he was on his way home from a picnic, met or overtook James Salyers and James Han, in the public road, presented his pistol at them, and demanded that they should surrender their watches and money. This they did, and the appellant taking possession of them, required Han, one of the parties who had surrendered his watch, to go with him to the home of William Powers, a few miles distant, where Han remained until night, and then left for home. The parties lived not far from each other, and, so far as this record shows, were on friendly terms. The motive on the part of the appellant was either to place these parties in fear in order to deprive them of their property, and convert it to his own use, or he was so much under the influence of liquor as not to know what he was doing or had done; and, if such was his mental and physical condition, he could not have taken the property of Salyers and Han with a felonious intent. He made no effort to conceal the property, and when he regained consciousness finding that he had the watches and money in his possession immediately returned them to their owners. He was unable to deliver them in person, as by some means he had been wounded in the thigh by a pistol-shot, the manner of its infliction being unexplained by this record. The evidence as to his mental and physical condition at the time of the alleged crime; his return of the watch and money,-was excluded from the jury upon the idea that voluntary intoxication is no excuse for crime; and therefore the assault on Salyers and Han, resulting in their delivery to the accused of the property, makes him guilty of robbery, although the assault and the taking by the accused was without any felonious intent. In other words, the facts upon which the accused based his defense, in order to show an absence of a felonious purpose, was held to be incompetent, and a conviction necessarily followed. The testimony offered should have gone to the jury, so that they might determine the intent of the accused when he made the assault. It has been held by this court in...