Mitchell v. State, (No. 2779.)

• Decision Date: 14 December 1921
• Docket Number: (No. 2779.)
• Citation: 152 Ga. 375,109 S.E. 357
• Parties: MITCHELL. v. STATE.
• Court: Georgia Supreme Court

152 Ga. 375

109 S.E. 357

MITCHELL.

v.STATE.

(No. 2779.)

Supreme Court of Georgia.

Dec. 14, 1921.

(Syllabus by the Court.)

Error from Superior Court, Bibb County; H. A. Mathews, Judge.

M. G. Mitchell was convicted of murder, and he brings error. Reversed.

Dr. M. C. Mitchell, a negro practitioner of medicine, was convicted of the murder of his nephew, Henry S. Mitchell, and given a sentence of life imprisonment. The indictment charges that Dr. Mitchell prepared and administered and caused to be administered, internally to Henry S. Mitchell, arsenic or other poisons of like character, which produce death. The indictment was demurred to upon the grounds that it does not charge any offense; does not charge the time and place when the poison was alleged to have been administered; does not charge that the "other poisons of like character" were deadly and likely to produce death, or that the defendant administered these other poisons with intent to kill unlawfully and with malice aforethought; does not set out any amount of poison as having been administered, and does not with sufficient clearness allege the manner in which the poison was administered. Error is assigned on excep tion taken pendente lite to the overrulings of this demurrer. Error is also assigned upon the overruling of a motion for new trial.

The contention of the state was that the defendant had administered the poison which produced the death of Henry S. Mitchell, in order that he might realize some twenty-odd thousand dollars of insurance carried upon the life of Henry S. Mitchell, the policies covering which were payable to Dr. Mitchell or to some member of his family. The evidence introduced by the state tended to show that after the discharge of Henry S. Mitchell from the army he lived for some time the life of a vagrant in and around Montezuma, where the defendant was engaged in the practice of medicine and the conduct of a drug store; that during this time an examination by a physician revealed the fact that the deceased had syphilis in an advanced stage; that the beneficiary in a certificate of insurance carried by the deceased with the Bureau of War Risks was changed, and the same was made payable to the defendant; that with knowledge of the condition of the deceased the defendant procured the issuance of a number of insurance policies upon the life of the deceased, payable to himself or to members of his family; that in some instances the reports of the medical examination, purporting to...