Smith v. State

• Decision Date: 05 July 1909
• Docket Number: 13,863
• Citation: 95 Miss. 786,49 So. 945
• Court: Mississippi Supreme Court
• Parties: CHARLES R. SMITH v. STATE OF MISSISSIPPI

49 So. 945

95 Miss. 786

CHARLES R. SMITH v. STATE OF MISSISSIPPI

No. 13,863

Supreme Court of Mississippi

July 5, 1909

FROM the circuit court of Lowndes county, HON. JOHN L. BUCKLEY Judge.

Smith appellant, was indicted, tried and convicted of murder sentenced to the penitentiary for life and appealed to the supreme court. The judges were not unanimous in their conclusions touching the facts. The opinion in chief sufficiently states the facts as ascertained from the record by a majority of the court to render a further statement by the reporter unnecessary to a comprehension of the principles decided. The chief justice dissented from some of the findings of fact by the other judges, as shown by his dissenting opinion.

Judgment affirmed.

SMITH, J. WHITFIELD, C. J., dissenting.

OPINION

SMITH, J.

Defendant was convicted in the court below of murder, sentenced to life imprisonment in the state penitentiary, and appeals to this court. His defense was delusional insanity; the particular delusion being that his daughter had been debauched by Laurent, the man whom he killed. One of the assignments of error is that the verdict was not warranted by the evidence. The testimony in this case is so voluminous that an intelligent review of the same would require a volume in itself and would serve no good purpose; suffice it to say that on the evidence the question of defendant's criminal responsibility was for the jury, and, unless some error of law was committed prejudicial to the defendant, the verdict, of course, must stand.

On the cross-examination of the defendant he was asked, and permitted to testify over his objection, to his conduct in several fights which he had had with various parties at various times, when there was no pretense of his not being sane. Other witnesses testified, over defendant's objection, to this conduct also. This action of the court is also assigned as error. This evidence was relevant to the issue and perfectly competent. Where the defense is insanity, general or partial, the door is thrown wide open for the admission of evidence; every act of the party's life is relevant to the issue and admissible in evidence. 1 Wigmore on Evidence, § 228, and authorities there cited; State v. Jones, 50 N.H. 369, 9 Am. Rep. 242.

The twentieth instruction asked by the defendant was as follows: "If from the evidence the jury believe that, at the time of the killing, the defendant honestly and in good faith believed that deceased had seduced and ruined his only daughter, and that such belief on the part of the defendant had no foundation in truth and fact, and that on the occasion of the killing the defendant, on meeting the deceased, was seized with an insane and irresistible impulse to kill him because he believed that the deceased had seduced and ruined his only daughter, and that the defendant's act in killing deceased was the direct result of said uncontrollable impulse, springing from a mental disease, existing to so high a degree that for the time being it overwhelmed the reason, judgment, and conscience of the defendant, then he is not guilty, and the jury will acquit." This instruction was modified by adding after the word "defendant" and before the word "then" in the last line the words "that he was unable to distinguish moral right from wrong." And this action of the court is assigned as error.

Where the defense is insanity, total or partial, the test of the defendant's criminal responsibility is his ability, at the time he committed the act, to realize and appreciate the nature and quality thereof--his ability to distinguish right and wrong. Grissom v. State, 62 Miss. 167. And the test is the same where the defense is that the act was the result of an uncontrollable impulse caused by any species of insanity. This is distinctly held in Commonwealth v. Rogers, 7 Metc. 500, 41 Am. Dec. 458, and Cunningham v. State, 56 Miss. 269, 21 Am. Rep. 360, so much relied upon by the appellant, and the reasons therefor clearly set forth.

Uncontrollable impulse as a defense when the defendant is able to distinguish right from wrong was in the Cunningham case repudiated in the following language: "But there is said to be an uncontrollable impulse springing from a mental condition quite different from this, a state of the mind which perfectly perceives the true relations of the party and recognizes all the obligations thereby imposed, but which, it is said, is unable to control the will. This character of insanity is variously styled moral, or emotional, or impulsive, or paroxysmal insanity. It is known among medical writers as lesion of the will. Its peculiarity is said to be that, while the mental perception is unimpaired, the mind is powerless to control the will; that while its unhappy subject knows the right, and desires to pursue it, some mysterious and uncontrollable impulse compels him to commit the wrong. This kind of insanity, if insanity it can be called, though sometimes recognized by respectable courts, and still oftener, perhaps, by juries seeking an excuse to evade the stern dictates of the law, is properly rejected by the authorities generally. The possibility of the existence of such a mental condition is too doubtful, the theory is too problematical, and too incapable of a practical solution, to afford a safe basis of legal adjudication. It may serve as a metaphysical or psychological problem to interest and amuse the speculative philosopher, but it must be discarded by the jurist and the lawgiver in the practical affairs of life. To it may well be applied the language of Judge CURTIS, who, in speaking of this and similar questions, says: 'They are an important, as well as a deeply interesting, study, and they find their place in that science which ministers to diseases of the mind. . . . But the law is not a medical nor a metaphysical science. Its search is after those practical rules which may be administered without inhumanity, for the security of civil society by protecting it from crime.'" It is true that in that case it was also held that an uncontrollable impulse springing from mental disease existing to so high a degree that for the time it overwhelmed the reason, judgment, and conscience would excuse the commission of crime. Where a person's reason, judgment, and conscience is overwhelmed, it is utterly impossible, of course, for him to distinguish the right and wrong of a matter.

In Commonwealth v. Rogers, supra, Shaw, C. J., said: "A man is not to be excused from responsibility if he has capacity and reason sufficient to enable him to distinguish between right and wrong as to the particular act he is then doing; a knowledge and consciousness that the act he is doing is wrong and criminal, and will subject him to punishment. In order to be responsible, he must have sufficient power of memory to recollect the relation in which he stands to others, and in which others stand to him; that the act he is doing is contrary to the plain dictates of justice and right, injurious to others, and a violation of the dictates of duty. On the contrary, although he may be laboring under partial insanity, if he still understands the nature and character of his act, and its consequences; if he has a knowledge that it is wrong and criminal, and a mental power sufficient to apply that knowledge to his own case, and to know that, if he does the act, he will do wrong and receive punishment--such partial insanity is not sufficient to exempt him from responsibility for criminal acts."

Our interpretation of these cases is sustained by many high authorities, among whom are Mr. Bishop. In his work on Criminal Law (8th ed.) vol. 1, § 383b, Mr. Bishop says: "But many seem to maintain that if one is so disordered mentally as, while intellectually comprehending right and wrong, and knowing an act to be forbidden and punishable by the law, to be still unable to adjust his conduct to the law and avoid doing the forbidden thing, he is to be punished if he does it, the same as though he was same," citing in support thereof, among other authorities, the Cunningham case. And again, in section 384, he says: "It is not in all the cases absolutely clear what, of the language addressed to the jury, is meant for pure law, and what of it is for mere practical suggestion. But either as the one or the other, the jury in the greater number of the cases are in substance directed to consider whether, when the prisoner committed the act, he was in a state to comprehend his relations to others, the nature of the thing done, and its criminal character against, what he is presumed to know, the law of the land; or, in another form of words, regarded as in effect the same, whether in what he did he was of capacity to be conscious of doing wrong; or, in still other language, whether he could distinguish between right and wrong with reference to what he was doing." In support thereof he cites many authorities, among them being Commonwealth v. Rogers, supra, and Grissom v. State, 62 Miss. 167.

In this last-cited case CHALMERS, J., author of the opinion in the Cunningham case, said: "The test with us in this class of cases is the capacity to distinguish between right and wrong, and we know no difference in this regard between total and partial insanity." In People v Hubert, 119 Cal. 216, 51 P. 329, 63 Am. St. Rep. 77, it is said: "It must be held that, conceding that the act was the offspring of an irresistible impulse because of mental disease, still the defendant must be held responsible if he at the time had the requisite knowledge as to the nature and quality of the act and of its wrongfulness. We do not know that the impulse was irresistible, but only that it was not resisted. Whether irresistible or not must depend upon the...