State v. Willing
| Decision Date | 18 November 1905 |
| Citation | 105 N.W. 355,129 Iowa 72 |
| Parties | STATE v. WILLING. |
| Court | Iowa Supreme Court |
OPINION TEXT STARTS HERE
Appeal from District Court, Blackhawk County; A. S. Blair, Judge.
Indictment and conviction upon charge of arson, and the defendant appeals. Reversed.A. B. Switzer and Chamberlin & Peterson, for appellant.
Chas. W. Mullan, Atty. Gen., and L. De Graff, Asst. Atty. Gen., for the State.
The appellant was jointly indicted with one Harry Allendorf upon the charge of “unlawfully, willfully, maliciously, and feloniously” burning in the nighttime a certain store owned by one M. H. Loomer. A reversal of the judgment against him is asked upon several grounds.
1. Objection is made to the definition of reasonable doubt, given by the court to the jury. The paragraph of the charge to which reference is made embodies in substance the definition of reasonable doubt which this court approved in State v. Ostrander, 18 Iowa, 435. That precedent has been too often cited and followed as authority to be now lightly overthrown. It may be conceded that this definition is not wholly satisfactory, and that no attempt yet made to define the phrase is wholly beyond criticism. Indeed, in the opinion of the writer, these words are in themselves so simple, clear, and expressive that attempts to state the idea conveyed by them in other terms tends to confusion rather than simplification, but it is the long and well-established practice in trial courts to elaborate the meaning in various forms for the supposed benefit of the jury, and the instruction given in the present case is substantially such as we have frequently sustained.
2. The statute under which appellant was indicted makes both willfulness and malice essential ingredients of the crime of arson. Code, §§ 4776-4780. In defining malice the court told the jury that it “does not mean hatred or ill will against the owner of the property, but it means the intentional doing of a wrongful act,” and this charge is assigned as error. While the words “willful” and “malicious” are not easy of exact definition, and the attempts to distinguish between them have not always been happy or instructive, the statute treats them as denoting distinct ideas, and this court has held that a charge of willfulness does not include, nor is it the equivalent of, a charge of malice. State v. Lightfoot, 107 Iowa, 344, 78 N. W. 41;State v. Gould, 40 Iowa, 372. If this be the case, it follows of necessity that a definition of malice which is identical with the accepted definition of willfulness is incorrect, and this, we think, is the vice of the instruction under consideration. The “intentional doing of a wrongful act” is not necessarily a “malicious” act. Every voluntary act of a human being is intentional, but, generally speaking, a voluntary act becomes willful in law only when it involves some degree of conscious wrong or evil purpose upon the part of the actor, or at least an inexcusable carelessness or recklessness on his part, whether the act be right or wrong. Werner v. Flies, 91 Iowa, 149, 59 N. W. 18;Parker v. Parker, 102 Iowa, 500, 71 N. W. 421. If, however, we are to construe the word “intentional” in this instruction as including the idea of conscious wrong or evil design, it is apparent that, under the precedents cited, we have a definition of “willfulness,” but not of “malice.” Without pausing for any elaborate discussion of the distinction, we may say that in general a “malicious” act involves all that is usually understood by the term “willful,” and is further marked by either hatred or ill will toward the party injured, or by such utter recklessness and disregard of the rights of others as denotes a corrupt or malevolent disposition.
It is true that malice may be and is often implied or presumed from the willfulness of the wrongful act. The state cannot enter into the heart and mind of the accused and prove his designs and motives by direct evidence, but when it has established the evil act itself, and shown to a moral certainty that it was done voluntarily and willfully the inference of malice is ordinarily inevitable. In our judgment, therefore, the instruction given by the trial court upon this feature of the case was defective. It could, perhaps, be fairly...
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Brown v. State
...28, 74 A. 2 (Del.1909); Love v. State, 107 Fla. 376, 144 So. 843 (1932); State v. Dunn, 199 N.W.2d 104 (Iowa 1972); State v. Willing, 129 Iowa 72, 105 N.W. 355 (1905); Jillson v. Commonwealth, 461 S.W.2d 542 (Ky.1970); Commonwealth v. Lamothe, 343 Mass. 417, 179 N.E.2d 245 (1961); State v. ......
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