State v. Short
| Decision Date | 02 December 1907 |
| Docket Number | 16,697 |
| Citation | 120 La. 187,45 So. 98 |
| Court | Louisiana Supreme Court |
| Parties | STATE v. SHORT |
Appeal from First Judicial District Court, Parish of Caddo; Andrew Jackson Murff, Judge.
S. B Short was convicted of manslaughter, and he appeals. Reversed.
John Rutherford Land, William Alexander Mabry, and Ivy, Hill & Greenwood, for appellant.
Walter Guion, Atty. Gen., James Martin Foster, Dist. Atty. (Lewis Guion and Milton Carter Elstner, of counsel), for the State.
The defendant was charged with the murder of Lee Howard, and indicted on the 16th day of May, 1907.
He was tried and found guilty of manslaughter on the 28th day of May.
From the sentence condemning him to serve 10 years at hard labor, he appeals.
The judge admonished the jury in his charge that the law presumed a defendant innocent until the state had made out a case against him beyond reasonable doubt, which he defined. The crimes of manslaughter and murder were also defined at length. With regard to self-defense, he instructed them that homicide may be justifiable, if done in self-defense, and defined self-defense as the right to protect one's person and property from injury, and added that a man has the right to repel force by force, using sufficient force to repel and overcome that which is opposed to him even by taking the life of his adversary where he is apparently in imminent danger of losing his own life, or of suffering great bodily harm at the hands of his adversary. And he instructed the jury that the danger of one losing his life, or the infliction of great bodily harm, need not be real to justify the taking of human life in self-defense, but it is enough if it is apparently imminent from all the surrounding circumstances, and illustrated that one assaulting another with a gun in such a manner as to create great fear of apparent death or great bodily harm would justify him in acting, though it may turn out that the gun was not loaded and was really harmless; that it is the reasonably imminent and apparent danger of losing life or of suffering great bodily harm that authorizes one to act in self-defense, but that this danger must be imminent at the time or apparently so in order to justify the taking of human life. He stated that when one is suddenly assaulted, and from all the surrounding circumstances and facts it is necessary to save his own life, or to save himself from great bodily harm, that he need not retreat that he has a perfect right to defend himself and to pursue his adversary until he is out of danger, but no further. He charged further that, although one may have been in imminent danger of his life, if that danger is passed, and he has his adversary in such a position that he can protect himself without inflicting death, it is his duty to do so, and if after all danger has passed he would then inflict the death blow, it would then be either murder or manslaughter according to whether it was deliberately done or done under the heat of passion; that it was for the jury to decide from all the surrounding circumstances as they necessarily must have appeared to a reasonable man situated as defendant was at the time that he inflicted the death blow. He charged further that one cannot arm himself with a dangerous weapon with the intention of taking human life or of doing great bodily harm to another, hunt up this party, bring on the difficulty, and then plead self-defense, unless he shows an honest disposition and intention to recede and withdraw from the difficulty and combat which he himself has brought on. "I charge further," said the court, "that, although one may have intended to do another great bodily harm, or even take his life, yet if he should recant from that intention and change his mind, and should suddenly come upon his adversary, who should without a probable cause make a sudden assault upon him which to a...
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