People v. Guillett

• Decision Date: 09 March 1955
• Docket Number: No. 63,63
• Citation: 342 Mich. 1,69 N.W.2d 140
• Parties: The PEOPLE of the State of Michigan, Plaintiff and Appellee, v. Lawrence GUILLETT, Defendant and Appellant.
• Court: Michigan Supreme Court

Page 140

69 N.W.2d 140

342 Mich. 1

The PEOPLE of the State of Michigan, Plaintiff and Appellee, v. Lawrence GUILLETT, Defendant and Appellant.

No. 63.

Supreme Court of Michigan.

March 9, 1955.

Lawrence Guillett, Jackson, appellant in pro. per.

Thomas Kavanagh, Atty. Gen., Edmund Shepherd, Solicitor Gen., Lansing, Jerome F. O'Rourke, Pros. Atty., and Robert A. Steadman, Asst. Pros. Atty., Genesee County, Flint, for the People.

Before the Entire Bench.

BUTZEL, Justice.

Lawrence Guillett was informed against for assault with intent to commit rape. He pleaded not guilty and was tried in circuit court where a jury found him guilty of the crime charged. Appellant in propria persona has appealed from him conviction on various grounds. The complainant had agreed to spend an evening with him. He, with two other friends, called for her and they visited a tavern where each of them consumed three glasses of beer. She and appellant then went to the home of the latter's parents, and later purchased a bottle of wine out of which she took one glass which she only partially consumed while he apparently finished the bottle. They sat together on a davenport and he made indecent advances which she repulsed. After she arose he then struck her, knocked her down and continued his attempt to commit rape. During a struggle she grabbed a telephone receiver and struck him so many blows on the head that he required hospitalization. She then escaped, ran across the road and the police and an ambulance were summoned. Appellant's mother testified that he had been drinking for several days and that he had come home drunk earlier that day, but she left him to go to work shortly after 3 p. m. His father said that he appeared 'dozy.'

In view of the testimony the trial judge in his charge to the jury stated:

'Now, there has been injected here to a great extent, the question of intoxication. I will give you an instruction on that.

'It is a well settled law in this state that voluntary drunkenness is not a defense to crime. A man who puts himself in a position to have no control over his actions must be held to intend the consequences. The safety of the community requires this rule. Intoxication is so easily counterfeited, and, when real, is so often resorted to as a means of nerving a person up to the commission of some deliberate act, and withal is so inexcusable in itself, that the law has never recognized it as an excuse for crime.

'In the case of an offense such as the one charged, committed during a period of intoxication, the law presumes the defendant to have intended the obscuration and perversion of his faculties which followed his voluntary intoxication. He must be held to have purposely blinded his moral perception and set his will free from the control of reason--to have suppressed the guards and invited the mutiny; and should therefore be held responsible as well for the vicious excesses of the will thus set free as for the acts done by its prompting.'

Defendant has assigned error on the ground that the charge as given was incomplete and therefore misleading because it failed to state that intoxication may serve to negative the existence of the intent required for conviction of the crime charged. We are thus faced with two questions: one, was the charge erroneous; and two, if so, did it constitute reversible error in view of the fact that no requests to charge were offered?

We must conclude that the charge was erroneous. In Roberts v. People, 19 Mich. 401, 418, 420, the defendant was convicted of assault with intent to commit murder. On appeal, after considering the necessity for finding intent in fact, or specific intent, Justice Christiancy discussed the issue of whether drunkenness might negative the existence of that intent. He concluded:

'In determining the question whether the assault was committed with the intent charged, it was therefore material to inquire whether the defendant's mental faculties were so far overcome by the effect of intoxication, as to render him incapable of entertaining the intent. And for this purpose, it was the right and the duty of the jury--as upon the question of intent of which this forms a part--to take into consideration the nature and the circumstances of the assault, the actions, conduct and demeanor of the defendant, and his declaration before, at the time, and after the assault; and especially to consider the nature of the intent, and what degree of mental capacity was necessary to enable him to entertain the simple intent to kill, under the circumstances of this case--or, which is the same thing, how far the mental faculties must be obscured by intoxication to render him incapable of entertaining that particular intent. * * *

'But the Circuit Court held, in effect that no extent of intoxication could have the effect to disprove the intent; treating the intent as an inference of law for the Court, rather than a question of fact for the jury. In this we think there was error.'

A consideration of later Michigan authority reveals that Roberts v. People, supra, remains as the most eloquent and correct statement of law on the subject. Thus in People v. Walker, 38 Mich. 156, Judge Cooley wrote an opinion reversing a conviction of larceny stating:

'While it is true that drunkenness cannot excuse crime, it is equally true that when a certain intent is a necessary element in a crime, the crime cannot have been committed when the intent did not exist. In larceny the crime does not consist in the wrongful taking of the property, for that might be a mere trespass; but it consists in the wrongful taking with felonious intent; and if the defendant, for any reason whatever, indulged no such intent, the crime cannot have been committed. This was fully explained by Mr. Justice Christiancy in Roberts v. People, 19 Mich. 401, and is familiar law.'

And in the following cases this rule has been recognized and applied. People v. Haley, 48 Mich. 495, 12 N.W. 671; People v. Peterson, 166 Mich. 10, 131 N.W. 153; People v. Eggleston, 186 Mich. 510, 152 N.W. 944; Cf. People v. Depew, 215 Mich. 317, 183 N.W. 750; People v. Toner, 217 Mich. 640, 187 N.W. 386, 23 A.L.R. 433; also see People v. Murray, 72 Mich. 10, 40 N.W. 29. It is to be noted that we are here concerned with intoxication insofar as it might negative the requisite intent, as distinguished from insanity or delirium tremens brought on by intoxication, the latter, if present being a complete excuse rather than a partial one, as here. For this distinction, see People v. Toner, supra; Roberts v. People, supra; Director of Public Prosecutions v. Beard, 12 A.L.R. 846.

It is important in this decision to emphasize that intoxication may only negative the existence of specific intent. Examination of the cases reveals that where the rule was applied it was done so in cases where the crime charged also involved a specific intent. Apparently the trial judge in the instant case did not realize this. For the most part his charge was in the exact words of Justice Cooley in People v. Garbutt, 17 Mich. 9. However, it should have been noted that the crime involved in that case was murder, not a specific intent crime, or as was said in Roberts v. People, supra, 19 Mich. at page 417:

'The correctness of the principle laid down by this Court in People v. Garbutt (17 Mich. 9-19), is not denied; that 'a man who voluntarily puts himself into a condition to have no control of his actions, must be held to intend the consequences.' But this, it is insisted, includes only the consequences which do actually ensue--the crime actually committed; and not in this case the intent charged, if the defendant was at the time incapable of entertaining it, and did not in fact entertain it.'

'We think this reasoning is entirely sound, and it is well supported by authority.'

The crime of assault with intent to rape involves a specific intent. People v. Dowell, 136 Mich. 306, 99 N.W. 23; see People v. Richardson, 224 Mich. 66, 194 N.W. 612; C.L.S.1952, § 750.85, Stat.Ann.1953 Cum.Supp. § 28.280. The charge was therefore erroneous.

Plaintiff contends, however, that such is not reversible error because appellant failed to request such an instruction...