Lakey v. State

• Decision Date: 27 August 1952
• Citation: 258 Ala. 116,61 So.2d 117
• Parties: LAKEY v. STATE. 8 Civ. 632.
• Court: Alabama Supreme Court

Page 117

61 So.2d 117

258 Ala. 116

LAKEY v. STATE.

8 Civ. 632.

Supreme Court of Alabama.

Aug. 27, 1952.

Rehearing Denied Nov. 6, 1952.

Bradshaw & Barnett, Florence, and Smith & Tompkins, Tuscumbia, for appellant.

Si Garrett, Atty. Gen., and Bernard F. Sykes, Asst. Atty. Gen., and Maury D. Smith, Montgomery, of counsel, for the State.

The following charges were refused to defendant:

27. 'I charge you, gentlemen of the jury, that if you are reasonably satisfied from the evidence that the defendant at the time of the alleged killing was so drunk that he was incapable of forming the purpose to do a voluntary act, then I charge you, you cannot convict him of any offense higher than manslaughter in the second degree.'

40. 'I charge you Gentlemen of the Jury that the defendant in this case is charged with murdering his wife, and there is a strong presumption of innocence arising from the existence of the marital relation between the defendant and the deceased in addition to the legal presumption of innocence that exists in any criminal case.'

(55) 'I charge you, gentlemen of the Jury, that there is in the evidence in this case some evidence as to threats of the defendant against the deceased prior to the alleged killing, and some evidence as to acts of cruelty by the defendant toward the deceased prior to the alleged killing, and I charge you, gentlemen of the jury, this evidence has been permitted to come to you merely on the question of motive, if any, on the part of the defendant for the alleged killing, and I charge you that in your consideration of this evidence as to threats and acts of cruelty prior to the date of the alleged death, you must be cautious.'

(70) 'I charge you, Gentlemen of the Jury that in your consideration of the alleged declaration of the defendant prior to the death of the deceased you can not be too cautious in attaching importance to such evidence for if you are satisfied from the evidence in this case that the motive is a weak and inconclusive circumstance, the evidence which only tends to prove the existence of said motive is less conclusive and you should be guarded as to the importance you attach to said evidence.'

SIMPSON, Justice.

Standford Lakey was convicted of the murder of his wife, Tommie Fields Lakey, and received a sentence of life imprisonment. He appeals from that judgment.

The evidence to establish the defendant guilty of taking his wife's life was circumstantial, but it pointed unerringly to him as the guilty agent. A short recital of the evidence for the State will demonstrate this. The couple had guests in their home for luncheon Sunday and they remained until about five o'clock, when they departed, leaving the defendant and his wife there alone. At this time Mrs. Lakey was asleep in the bedroom and defendant was reclining on the couch in the living room. He was not asleep. Some hour and a half or two hours later the defendant telephoned one of these guests at her home and said he wanted her and her husband 'to come over there, that something had happened to Tommie,' and when the couple then returned to the defendant's home, he was sitting in a chair in the living room and his wife, the deceased, was lying partly on the bed, dead. There was some blood and hair on the door facing leading from the living room to the bedroom, evidently one place she received an injury. The defendant stated that she was lying on the floor and he had kicked her in trying to get her to come to bed. He also said that he had put her on the bed after he kicked her. When being taken to jail, he told the sheriff he did not intend to kill her. There was evidence that at previous times he had struck her and threatened to kill her. He had told one witness some few months previous to the fatal occasion that he had beaten her the night before and that 'I ought to go to the doctor's office now [where she worked] and drag her out and beat her brains out. I hate her and I am going to kill her yet. I despise * * * that big fat slosh.' When the witness queried, 'Why do you live with her?' he said, 'Well, it's a good living.' At about the same time, he had told his wife in the presence of another witness, 'I am going to kill you and plead insanity and get out of it. You don't think I am smart enough to do it but I will show you sometime.' On these occasions he appeared to be drinking. One witness testified of occasions when he had beaten her and tried to choke her. The physician by whom she was employed testified he had seen her with a black eye and bruises on her body on numerous occasions. There was no evidence that anyone else was in the house when his wife was killed and his previously expressed ill will and manner of treatment and the statements made to the officers when they appeared on the scene make it conclusive beyond all doubt that defendant was guilty of her death.

The medical evidence from a doctor of long experience, whose qualifications were admitted, described the condition of the body. There were some cuts, bruises and scratches on her face extending into the scalp; a small cut on her nose, one cut on the upper lip and bruises over the face and each side of the neck; bruises on both arms and on one of her legs; one cut through and along the right eyebrow and above that another cut into the bone, with the skin peeled back; bruises over the chest wall and the abdomen was distended. On pressing the abdomen there was a 'slushing sound, a bogginess indicating fluid'; there was a 'crepitation' of bones over the left side of the chest and over the liver, fractured ends of bones rubbing together causing the same; there was a softness over the right side of the liver and there was no resistence from the ribs; numerous bruises were over both sides of the chest wall and back and considerable disfiguration; the ribs would push in and offer no resistence on pressure and the same slushing sound was exhibited on pressure on the chest wall; also 'crepitation of broken bones' over both sides of the chest wall. An autopsy disclosed that on opening the cranium the scalp was thickened from bruises but there were no bone fractures; when the chest wall was opened it was shown that the thoracic cavity and both lungs had collapsed; there were fractures of the ribs from the back which tore into the lung cavity on both sides, every rib on the right side from the seventh down being completely fractured and torn into the pleural cavity; some ribs on the left side were also fractured completely and also torn into the pleural cavity; there was a considerable amount of blood in the right chest cavity and the abdomen, grossly about five or six pints of free blood in the addominal cavity; the liver was also fractured in two places and a good sized part of the liver was torn loose completely. It was the opinion of this medical expert that some forcible blow produced the fracture of the liver and that death resulted from a forcible injury of some type and that the fracture of the liver as well as shock could have produced death; that these injuries were produced by some forcible blow which could have been caused from a man's fists or by kicking or stomping the body or by throwing it against a door facing.

The indictment was in five counts charging the defendant with murder in the first degree (1) by stomping his wife with his foot, (2) by kicking her with his foot, (3) by beating her with his fists, (4) by some means unknown to the grand jury, (5) by throwing her body into, upon or against a door facing. Just exactly the means which produced death is left to inference from the circumstances, but a verdict under any of the counts would have been proper. A general verdict was rendered.

The defendant did not testify and his principal defense was rested on insanity and drunkenness in mitigation of punishment. There was evidence that his mother had at one time been confined in a mental institution and that her brother, his uncle, had been an inmate of such an institution for many years; that the defendant in childhood had been of a moody disposition and sometime recently had received a lick on the head which affected his power of balance and orientation and that since having received this lick on his head, liquor unduly affected him. There was countervailing testimony of lay witnesses that in their opinion defendant was normal and the defendant's superintendent where he worked testified that although he was slow in doing his job, he was a fairly good worker, and seemed to be normal mentally. Some lay witnesses testified that in their opinion defendant was not normal mentally, but this evidence--all of it--went to the jury for decision of the question of insanity or drunkenness to reduce the grade of the crime.

There was expert opinion evidence that the defendant was insane, but the probative force of this expert opinion evidence to overrule the presumption of sanity was also a question exclusively for the jury. Reedy v. State, 246 Ala. 363, 20 So.2d 528; Hockenberry v. State, 246 Ala. 369, 20 So.2d 533; Lee v. State, 246 Ala. 343, 20 So.2d 471; Parsons v. State, 81 Ala. 577, 2 So. 854.

The law on insanity as a defense to a criminal charge is so well recognized that we will advert to it only briefly. Generally, mere weakness of mind alone does not negative discriminating intelligence as to render a person irresponsible for crime. Hall v. State, 248 Ala. 33, 26 So.2d 566. Neither abnormality nor subnormality precludes liability for crime where there exists sufficient mental capacity to entertain the requisite criminal intent. As excuse for crime the defendant must show clearly to the reasonable satisfaction of the jury that he was so afflicted by disease of the brain when the offense was committed as to render him so insane that he did not know right from wrong with respect to the particular offense charged, or by reason of such mental duress he could not resist doing the wrong; and the crime must have...