State v. Landreth

• Decision Date: 31 January 1816
• Citation: 4 N.C. 331,2 Car. L. Rep. 446
• Court: North Carolina Supreme Court
• Parties: STATE v. LANDRETH.

4 N.C. 331

2 Car. L. Rep. 446

STATE

v.LANDRETH.

SUPREME COURT OF NORTH CAROLINA

JANUARY TERM, 1816

Malicious mischief is confined to those cases where the act is done in a spirit of wanton malignity, without provocation or excuse, and under circumstances which bespeak a mind prompt and disposed to the commission of mischief; and does not include cases where the act is prompted by the sudden resentment of an injury which is calculated in no slight degree to awaken passion. Hence, an indictment for this offense will not lie where the defendant took a mare from his cornfield, where she was damaging his growing corn, to a secret part of the county, where he inflicted the wound with a view of preventing a repetition of the injury.

THE defendant was indicted for malicious mischief in stabbing with a butcher's knife a mare, the property of Young; but from the circumstances disclosed in the evidence, HENDERSON, J., before whom the cause was tried, was inclined to doubt whether the facts proved constituted the crime. He therefore recommended the jury to find a special verdict; in which it is stated that the defendant took the mare from his cornfield, where she was damaging his growing corn, to a secret part of the county, where he inflicted the wound, with a view of preventing a repetition of the injury. The case was submitted.

TAYLOR, C. J. We do not think that the facts found in this case bring the offense within the common-law notion of malicious mischief. That seems to be confined to those cases where the act is done in a spirit of wanton malignity, without provocation or excuse, and under circumstances which bespeak a mind prompt and disposed to the commission of mischief. It is essential, says Blackstone, to the commission of this offense, that it must be done of a spirit of wanton cruelty or black and diabolical revenge. 4 Bl., 244.

The conduct of the defendant was certainly highly reprehensible and barbarous, yet it was prompted by the sudden resentment of an injury which is calculated, in no slight degree, to awaken passion; and there is a difference which every one must feel, between an actcommitted under such circumstances and one where the party goes off his own land in pursuit of an animal which had done him no injury, for the sake of exercising cruelty or perpetrating wanton mischief.

Judgment for the defendant.

NOTE.—See S. v. Simpson, 9 N. C., 460.

Cited: S. v. Robinson, 20 N. C., 131; S. v. Helms, 27 N. C., 365; S. v. Martin, 141 N. C., 838, 839.

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