State v. Cooper

• Decision Date: 28 March 1904
• Docket Number: 15,078
• Citation: 112 La. 281,36 So. 350
• Court: Louisiana Supreme Court
• Parties: STATE v. COOPER

36 So. 350

112 La. 281

STATE v. COOPER

No. 15,078

Supreme Court of Louisiana

March 28, 1904

Appeal from Twenty-Sixth Judicial District Court, Parish of Washington; Thomas M. Burns, Judge.

George C. Cooper was convicted of murder, and appeals. Reversed.

Prentiss Benjamin Carter, S.D. Corkern, L. L. Morgan, Ansil N Simmons, Warren Doyle, and Joseph E. Generelly, for appellant.

Walter Guion, Atty. Gen., Gordon W. Goodbee, Dist. Atty. (Benjamin Moore Miller and Lewis Guion, of counsel), for the State.

NICHOLLS C.J. BREAUX, J., concurs.

OPINION

NICHOLLS C.J.

Statement of the Case.

Defendant was indicted for the murder of one William Jones. On the trial of his case, the jury returned against him a verdict of guilty as charged, without capital punishment. He was sentenced to imprisonment at hard labor in the State Penitentiary for life. He appealed.

We find a number of bills of exception in the record, but counsel rely for a reversal upon the complaint set out in the fifth and eighth bills of exception.

The fifth bill recites that the defendant offered himself to prove that on the night of the homicide, about 20 minutes before it, he was told by his daughter that the deceased had committed an outrage on her person the previous Sunday evening, two days before the homicide, and that this was the first time he had ever seen his daughter after the outrage complained of; to the admission of which statement in evidence, counsel for the state objected as immaterial incompetent, and irrelevant, and not justifying or excusing the homicide. One Eugene Williams, the only eyewitness, had testified that he and the deceased and defendant were riding home from the primary election held Tuesday, October 20, 1903, at about 8 o'clock at night; that when about a quarter of a mile from the precinct the defendant, Cooper, rode ahead of the other parties, and in a short time -- about 30 minutes -- he returned, and met the deceased and state witness Williams, and Cooper then had a gun, which he did not have when he left them, and that he presented his gun at deceased, and said, "You have done me enough," and deceased said, "What have I done to you, Mr. Cooper?" that defendant said, "You have done me a plenty, and I would as soon kill you and go to hell as not." Deceased then said, "You have the advantage of me, Mr. Cooper. Give me a show for my life." The defendant then fired, and the deceased fell from his horse. The witness' horse ran away with him, and defendant rode off. The deceased was found by the witness at the spot where he was shot, with his brains shot out. Under this testimony the district judge sustained the objection, assigning as his reason that such testimony did not justify or excuse the homicide.

The eighth bill recites that, on the trial, counsel offered the daughter of the accused as a witness, and, being asked by the district attorney the object and purpose of her testimony, stated that "he intended to prove and could prove by her that she was the daughter of the accused; that on a Sunday evening preceding the homicide the deceased, Willie Jones, came to her house and committed a rape upon her person by force and violence; that the first opportunity she had of informing her father, the accused, of the occurrence, was on Tuesday night, the night of the homicide, some 15 or 20 minutes before the killing, at her house, near the place of the killing, when she did inform her father; that he immediately left the house, and shortly afterwards returned and informed her he had killed the deceased; that, on objection made by the district attorney to allowing her testimony on the same grounds as had been assigned by him to the admission of her father's testimony, the court sustained the objections, assigning as his reason that such testimony did not justify or excuse the homicide."

Opinion.

In the brief of counsel for the accused, they say: "The evidence was not admissible for the purpose of justifying or excusing the homicide, but they submitted that it was admissible for the purpose of showing such provocation as would reduce the killing from murder to manslaughter." Counsel for the defendant contend that the court should have permitted the evidence to be introduced, subject to subsequent instructions from the court; that it should be left to the decision of the jury whether, under the circumstances shown, accused had not acted in such heat of blood and passion as might, in their opinion, justify a verdict of manslaughter; that the court should not have withdrawn that question, on that evidence, from the jury, by passing upon it itself. Counsel further urged that the rule that an intentional killing may be only manslaughter (what is termed "voluntary manslaughter") is so well established and so universally recognized that it would be superfluous to cite authorities. They say: "Where the killing is intentional, deliberate, premeditated, and with malice aforethought, the offense is murder; but where the killing is intentional, but without premeditation or malice but done in the heat of passion, upon sufficient, adequate provocation, the offense is only manslaughter, and that this is true even if done with some deliberation, if without premeditation or malignity of heart, but imputable to human infirmity. State v. Holme, 54 Mo. 166; State v. Ellis, 74 Mo. 207, 222." They cite Bishop's New Criminal Law, vol. 2, § 697 et seq.; Stephens' Digest Criminal Law, art. 225; State v. Hill, 34 Am. Dec. 396; McLain's Criminal Law, vol. 1, §§ 337, 342; Greenleaf on Evidence (13th Ed.) vol. 3, § 122; Wharton's Criminal Law, vol. 1, §§ 455, 460; State v. Boitreaux, 31 La.Ann. 188; State v. Concienne, 50 La.Ann. 848, 24 So. 134; Walcott v. Brander, 10 Tex. 421; Dikes v. Monroe, 15 Tex. 236, 617; Cooper v. Singleton, 19 Tex. 266, 70 Am. Dec. 333; Hawley v. Bullock, 29 Tex. 223; Dawson v. State, 33 Tex. 492; Stokes v. State, 18 Ga. 17; Biggs v....