Prather v. Commonwealth
| Decision Date | 28 September 1926 |
| Citation | 215 Ky. 714 |
| Parties | Prather v. Commonwealth. |
| Court | United States State Supreme Court — District of Kentucky |
1. Criminal Law. — Evidence held sufficient to take to jury question of defendant's sanity at time of crime, in prosecution for fraudulent conversion of trust funds.
2. Criminal Law. — In prosecution for fraudulent conversion of trust funds, instruction that jury could not acquit for insanity which arose from voluntarily acquired morphine habit held error.
3. Criminal Law. — It is common knowledge that morphine addicts have desire to stop using the drug but are unable to resist craving.
Appeal from Pulaski Circuit Court.
ELBERT WESLEY and GLADSTONE WESLEY for appellant.
FRANK E. DAUGHERTY, Attorney General, and G.D. LITSEY, Assistant Attorney General, for appellee.
Reversing.
T.B. Prather was convicted of the crime of fraudulent conversion of trust funds and his punishment fixed at confinement in the penitentiary for two years. On this appeal he urges as grounds for reversal that the verdict is not sustained by the evidence and that the court erred in its instructions to the jury on the defense of insanity.
It appears that appellant formerly was a prosperous and reputable real estate agent in the city of Somerset and as such negotiated the sale of a tract of land for Miss Mattie Johnson, who died in the year 1922. In the fall of that year her administrator sent to appellant for collection two purchase money lien notes executed for the land in question, aggregating over $1,800.00, and furnished him power of attorney to release the lien of record. He did all of this but did not account for the proceeds, and was visited by the administrator, W.R. Johnson, on the 10th of January, 1923. On that date he gave to Johnson a check for the amount, with interest, requesting him not to deposit it until the Saturday following. After this he wrote and wired Johnson several times in reference to it. The check was presented at the time suggested but was protested for nonpayment, and appellant, though repeatedly stating that he would pay it, has never paid any part of it. These facts are conclusively established by the Commonwealth and not denied by appellant, who identified his signature to the check and various other papers introduced by the Commonwealth, but who testified that he did not remember any part of the transaction except that he had a hazy recollection of having received the notes for collection and must have collected them and used the proceeds in the purchase of morphine. He further testified that in the year 1918 he underwent an operation for appendicitis, which was followed by serious adhesions, causing him great pain and to relieve which his physician administered morphine and which he used to procure relief until he became a morphine addict. That for some time prior to and after this transaction he was using from eight to twenty grains of morphine daily and spending all of the money he could get for that drug, which he purchased at home and elsewhere on prescription and clandestinely, his defense being that he was of unsound mind and mentally irresponsible. However, he has since been treated for that habit and cured and is now of sound mind.
A large number of witnesses, both lay and professional, were introduced in his behalf, and his defense is upheld by the great weight of the evidence. Physicians who treated him at home, as well as Dr. Sprague at Lexington, to whose sanitorium he was sent on January 31, 1923, testified that...
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