Porter v. State

• Decision Date: 04 February 1903
• Citation: 33 So. 694,135 Ala. 51
• Parties: PORTER v. STATE.
• Court: Alabama Supreme Court

33 So. 694

135 Ala. 51

PORTER v. STATE.

Supreme Court of Alabama

February 4, 1903

Appeal from circuit court, Russell county; A. A. Evans, Judge.

Uriah Porter was convicted of murder, and appeals. Reversed.

The defendant was indicted and convicted for murder in the first degree, and was sentenced to the penitentiary for life. The opinion sufficiently shows the questions reserved upon the admission of evidence. The court gave at the request of the state the following written charge: "When insanity is interposed as a defense to crime, under our statute, the burden of proof is on the defendant to prove it at least by a preponderance of the evidence, and a reasonable doubt as to it does not justify an acquittal." The court refused to defendant the following written charges, viz.: "(1) I charge you, gentlemen of the jury, that, if you have a reasonable doubt of defendant's guilt, you must acquit him. (2) While insanity, when set up as a defense in a criminal case, must be established to the reasonable satisfaction of the jury, by a preponderance of the evidence yet if, after a consideration of all the evidence in the case, the jury have a reasonable doubt of the guilt of the defendant, they must acquit him. (3) I charge you, gentlemen of the jury, that extravagant acts, nervousness sleeplessness, and restlessness are symptoms of insanity. (4) When insanity is proven to have existed at a given time, the presumption of the law is that it continued." Defendant appeals, and assigns as error the several rulings mentioned.

Barnes & Duke, for appellant.

Chas G. Brown, Atty. Gen., for the State.

SHARPE J.

Defendant was tried on an indictment charging him with the murder of Joseph Fincher. He defended under a plea of not guilty by reason of insanity and a plea of not guilty. That he committed the homicide was proved without dispute. In defendant's behalf, testimony was introduced respecting certain peculiarities in his appearance, acts, and utterances, and of mental unsoundness in other members of his family, which testimony tended to support the plea of insanity. The state introduced testimony of witnesses to the effect that they had long known the defendant, and were of the opinion he was sane at the time of the killing. Thereupon Dr. Prather, a medical expert, was called for the state, and testified he had heard all the evidence in the case. The solicitor then said to him: "Upon the whole of the evidence in this case tending to show the sanity and insanity of defendant at the time of the tragedy, all of which you have heard, what is your opinion of the defendant's mind at the time of the killing of Joseph Fincher?" Against defendant's objection, the witness was allowed to answer. "In my opinion, he was sane." This question called for an opinion of the witness, based not on a statement of facts in evidence, hypothesized as facts existing, but upon a mass of evidence wherein the opinion evidence for the state was opposed to inferences that might have been drawn from the circumstantial evidence adduced by defendant. A responsive answer to the question, such as was given, must necessarily have embodied and conveyed to the jury a conclusion of the witness as to the credibility of the testimony, and as to the value of the opinions expressed by other witnesses. To require or allow the witness to thus pass, like a jury, on the issue of insanity, was improper, and was probably injurious to the defense. Gunter v. State, 83 Ala 96, 3 So. 600, and...