Layne v. State
| Decision Date | 20 November 1975 |
| Citation | 531 S.W.2d 802 |
| Parties | Billy G. LAYNE, Plaintiff-in-Error, v. STATE of Tennessee, Defendant-in-Error. |
| Court | Tennessee Court of Criminal Appeals |
H. H. Gearinger, Chattanooga, for plaintiff-in-error.
R. A. Ashley, Jr., Atty. Gen., David L. Raybin, Asst. Atty. Gen., Nashville, David H. Rotroff, Asst. Dist. Atty. Gen., Chattanooga, for defendant-in-error.
In his usual courtly and eloquent manner, the Honorable H. H. Gearinger of the Chattanooga Bar as counsel for plaintiff in error seeks to persuade us that the conviction in this case for second degree murder resulting from the reckless use of a motor vehicle should be reversed because the defendant at the time was under the influence of barbiturate drugs to such an extent and in such manner as to render him temporarily insane due to involuntary intoxication.
There is no dispute as to the physical facts adduced at trial from which the jury found the defendant, while driving his automobile in a northerly direction on U.S. Highway 27 in Hamilton County, crossed to the wrong side of the road and collided with another vehicle head-on, causing the death of its two occupants. It is contended on behalf of the defendant that due to addiction he had an overwhelming compulsion to ingest the drugs which rendered the resulting intoxication involuntary and that the disability produced by the intoxication was symptomatic of illness and disease rather than a state of criminality. There is no suggestion in the record that the ingestion of the drugs was in any sense a result of mistake, trick, accident, or coercion.
We are faced with two controlling factors preventing our concurrence with the theory so ably advanced on behalf of plaintiff in error. The jury found as a matter of fact that the defendant was not insane at the time of the accident. And, our Supreme Court has consistently rejected all alternatives to the test of insanity controlling in Tennessee as charged by the trial court and generally referred to as the M'Naghten test or rule. It may well be that our highest Court will someday modify the law now controlling us on this point, but until it does we are firmly bound by its former pronouncements in such cases as Spurlock v. State, 212 Tenn. 132, 368 S.W.2d 299. See also Smith v. State, 2 Tenn.Cr.App. 192, 452 S.W.2d 669.
Past decisions of our Supreme Court have characterized homicides resulting from operating an automobile under the influence of an intoxicant as involuntary manslaughter. Keller v. State, 155 Tenn. 633, 299 S.W. 803; McGoldrick v. State, 159 Tenn. 667, 21 S.W.2d 390, and Gentry v. State, 184 Tenn. 299, 198 S.W.2d 643. Other decisions have affirmed second degree murder convictions arising out of such vehicular deaths....
To continue reading
Request your trial
-
Griffin v. State
...of our reported cases on the subject and have agreed with the conclusion of another panel of this court expressed in Layne v. State, 531 S.W.2d 802, 804 (Tenn.Cr.App.1975): From a close reading of the two lines of cases cited above it would appear that there has evolved over the past fifty ......
-
State v. Bray, No. M2007-01301-CCA-R3-CD (Tenn. Crim. App. 3/10/2008)
...ingestion of a substance is not "knowing," but rather attributable to a "mistake, trick, accident, or coercion." Layne v. State, 531 S.W.2d 802, 803 (Tenn. Crim. App. 1975). Therefore, we cannot conclude the Defendant's voluntary taking of a medication, to which he alleges he had an adverse......