State v. Partipilo
| Decision Date | 07 July 1908 |
| Citation | 116 N.W. 1049,139 Iowa 474 |
| Parties | STATE v. PARTIPILO. |
| Court | Iowa Supreme Court |
OPINION TEXT STARTS HERE
Appeal from District Court, Fayette County; L. E. Fellows, Judge.
Defendant was convicted of an assault with intent to commit murder, and he appeals. Affirmed.Tom. H. Milner, for appellant.
H. W. Byers, Atty. Gen., and C. W. Lyon, Asst. Atty. Gen., for the State.
The alleged assault was by shooting with a revolver. Defendant admitted the shooting, but claimed that it was done in self-defense. No requests were made by defendant for instructions. In the instructions, given by the court on its own motion, the jury was not told in formal phrase that the burden of proof was with the state. It was said, however, that the defendant “is presumed to be innocent until his guilt is established by sufficient legal evidence.” And again: etc. After defining the elements essential to the crime charged, the jury was further told: “And in this case, before you can convict the defendant * * * you must be satisfied from the evidence, beyond a reasonable doubt, that the defendant did, with malice aforethought, assault Abbananti with the specific intent to kill him,” etc. In the eleventh instruction, after stating correctly the abstract rule of self-defense, the court continued thus: “If you find that, shortly before the shooting, there had been an affray between the defendant and the person injured, and that such affray had ceased, and the defendant had gone away, then he had no right to return, either armed with a revolver or otherwise, for the purpose of defending himself against what had already occurred. Defendant cannot justify himself on the ground of self-defense, unless he was actually assaulted, after his return to the car, after going away and obtaining a revolver. It is for you to decide from the evidence whether or not he was assaulted after his return. If he was not, then he was not acting in self-defense in doing the shooting. If you find from the evidence that he was at that time assaulted, then you must determine from the evidence whether the circumstances were such as would justify him in firing the shot that injured Abbananti. If, guided by this instruction, you find from the evidence that the defendant, at the time of the shooting, was properly acting in self-defense, then you should acquit him.'
The demand for a reversal of the judgment is based on the failure of the court to properly instruct on the subject of burden of proof. And it is the argument that instruction 11 may very well have been understood by the jury as placing the burden of proving self-defense on the defendant; this especially as the last sentence of the instruction seems to make an acquittal depend upon an affirmative finding “that defendant, at the time of the shooting, was properly acting in self-defense.” It is the rule in this jurisdiction that “the burden is on the state to show that the defendant was not acting in self-defense, and this it must do by evidence sufficiently strong to remove all reasonable doubt.” State v. Shea, 104 Iowa, 724, 74 N. W. 687, and cases cited. Here the court conceived that self-defense was an issue in the case, and proceeded to instruct on the subject. It goes without saying that the law should have been fairly and correctly stated. The vice of the instruction assailed lies in the fact that it implies, or may be understood to imply, that a finding that defendant was properly acting as self-defense was necessary to his acquittal. Under the rule he was entitled to an acquittal if the state had failed to negative the claim of self-defense. And that is only another way of saying that, if the evidence addressed to self-defense was sufficient to give rise to a reasonable doubt of the defendant's guilt, he was entitled to an acquittal.
But the state insists that, conceding the error in the...
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