Purkey v. State

• Decision Date: 30 September 1870
• Citation: 50 Tenn. 26
• Parties: John Purkey et al. v. The State.
• Court: Tennessee Supreme Court

50 Tenn. 26

John Purkey et al.

v.The State.

Supreme Court of Tennessee.

September Term, 1870.

FROM HANCOCK.

In the Circuit Court, E. E. GILLENWATERS, J., presiding.

R. M. BARTON, for Plaintiff in Error.

Attorney General HEISKELL, for the State.

SNEED, J., delivered the opinion of the Court.

The Court charged the jury in this case, that the State need not show the parties are guilty, beyond all reasonable doubt. This is assigned as error upon the trial of a misdemeanor. In the same connection, however, the Court admonished the jury that the evidence must show the guilt of the defendants to their reasonable satisfaction, that their best judgments must be that the defendants are guilty, so that the mind may rest easy in the conclusion of guilt. With this qualification, we can not reverse the judgment in an offense of this grade for the error in the first proposition. It can not be denied that in the last part of the charge, the Court gave the defendants the benefit of the doctrine of reasonable doubts quite as fully as if the converse of the first proposition had been distinctly charged. The mind of a juror could scarcely “rest easy in the conclusion of guilt,” if a reasonable doubt of that guilt remained. This being so in this case, we are still led to the inquiry, whether that humane principle of the common law which forbids a conviction of felony if the evidence generates a reasonable doubt of the guilt of the prisoner, applies as well to misdemeanors as to felonies. There is a large class of misdemeanors, a conviction of which involves an ignominy scarcely less grave than a conviction of felony, in their punishment, as well as the moral degradation which follows such conviction. There are others in which the unlimited power of a jury in the imposition of fines might result in pecuniary impoverishment and ruin. In all criminal accusations, of whatever grade, the presumption of innocence attends the accused from the moment of the first suspicion that has rested upon him, until a jury has pronounced his guilt. And out of this presumption has arisen the benignant doctrine that the accused must have the benefit of any reasonable doubt that may exist as to his guilt. And this is a very old and venerable doctrine of the criminal law: Rex v. Stone, 6 T. R., 528. We can see no reason why this just and humane principle should not apply to misdemeanors as well as to felonies. Indeed, in the ancient authorities, no such distinction is observed....