Lee v. State
| Decision Date | 30 April 1860 |
| Citation | 41 Tenn. 62 |
| Parties | GEORGE LEE v. THE STATE. |
| Court | Tennessee Supreme Court |
The plaintiff in error was convicted of involuntary manslaughter, by a jury, at the December term, 1859, of the Criminal Court of Memphis, Judge Swayne presiding, from which he appealed.
Farrington, for Lee.
Attorney-General John W. Head, for the State.
The prisoner was convicted in the Criminal Court of Memphis, of involuntary manslaughter, and sentenced to the penitentiary for five years, the highest term of punishment for this offense, which consists in the unlawful killing of another, without malice, either expressly or implied, but in the commission of some unlawful act. This is the lowest grade of felonious homicide.
No exception is taken to the ruling of the judge of the Criminal Court in the reception or rejection of evidence, nor in his charge to the jury, set out or complained of, and must therefore be assumed to have been free of error.
The case comes to us upon an appeal of the prisoner, demanding a new trial upon the evidence. The prisoner is a free man of color, a hack-driver in the city of Memphis, and, some witnesses state, was regarded as prudent and humane, but upon one occasion was arrested for fast driving.
The deceased, for the slaying of whom the prisoner was convicted, was John J. Brown, Jr., a little boy between three and four years of age, the son of John J. Brown, who resides in the city of Memphis, near Teste's drug store on the west side of Main Street. Dr. J. T. Marable, who was present and saw the killing, testified that he was on the corner of the pavement, on the alley in front of Teste's drug store, on Main Street in the city of Memphis, in September, 1860, at the time the child was run over and killed by a hack driven by the prisoner, drawn by two horses.
Witness saw the little boy start to run across Main Street from Newsom's house, which was on the opposite side of the street from where witness was, and attempt to pass directly, and not diagonally, across the street. Witness saw at the same time the hack driven by the prisoner coming down Main Street; that about the time the child got to the middle of the street, which witness estimates to be sixty feet wide between the curbings, and when the hack was some forty or fifty feet from the point where the child was run over, Dr. Holland, who was also present, hallooed to the prisoner in a loud voice to look out and not run over the child. About the same time, Mrs. Brown, the mother of the child, cried out to the same effect from the top of the awning under which witness was standing. The prisoner paid no attention to said cries by reining up or turning his horses, but came on at the same gait along the west side of the street, and about ten or fifteen feet from the curbing. When the hack had got within twenty-five or thirty feet of the child, witness sprang out to the child, and towards the hack, with both hands raised, and cried at the top of his voice, and loud enough to be heard two squares, “Stop boy, and don't run over that child,” or similar words. The witness thought the child stopped a moment about the center of the street, as if frightened, but immediately started again, and from that time till run over, seemed to run as fast as he could to get across. The prisoner did not heed...
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Hughes v. State
...in itself but done in an unlawful manner and without due caution, and that death was the natural or probable result of such act. Lee v. State, 41 Tenn. 62; Nelson v. State, 65 Tenn. 418; Manier v. State, 65 Tenn. 595; Copeland v. State, 154 Tenn. 7, 285 S.W. 565, 49 A.L.R. 605; Wade v. Stat......
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...in itself but done in an unlawful manner and without due caution, and that death was the natural or probable result of such act. Lee v. State, 41 Tenn. 62; Nelson v. State, 65 Tenn. 418; Manier v. State, 65 Tenn. 595; Copeland v. State, 154 Tenn. 7, 285 S.W. 565, 49 A.L.R. 605; Wade v. Stat......
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...by some unlawful act, or any action not strictly unlawful in itself, but done in an unlawful manner and without due caution." Lee v. State, 41 Tenn. 62, 67 (1860). See also Letner v. State, 156 Tenn. 68, 299 S.W. 1049 We have no way of knowing what evidence will be adduced upon the trial of......
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Eager v. State
...doing of an act, the probable consequences of which was death, amounts to murder at common law. This is the doctrine of Lee v. State, (41 Tenn. 62, 66), and it is fully supported by the common law authorities.' Under the factual situation in the present case these parties clearly could have......