State v. Wright

• Citation: 148 A. 141
• Parties: STATE v. WRIGHT.
• Decision Date: 16 December 1929
• Court: Supreme Judicial Court of Maine (US)

148 A. 141

STATE

v. WRIGHT.

Supreme Judicial Court of Maine.

Dec. 16, 1929.

Appeal from Supreme Judicial Court, Franklin County.

Hersey Wright was found guilty of manslaughter, and he appeals. Appeal sustained.

Argued before DEASY, C. J., and DUNN, STURGIS, PATTANGALL, and FARRINGTON, JJ.

Frank A. Morey, of Lewiston, for appellant.

Carll N. Fenderson, of Farmington, for the State.

STURGIS, J. The respondent was indicted for manslaughter. At the trial, the prosecution relied upon involuntary manslaughter and offered evidence to prove that the respondent, while on a hunting trip, negligently shot the deceased as he rode by on horseback.

Criminality is not predicated upon mere negligence necessary to impose civil liability, but upon that degree of negligence or carelessness which is denominated gross or culpable. State v. Pond, 125 Me. 453, 134 A. 572; Fitzgerald v. State, 112 Ala. 39, 20 So. 966; People v. Adams, 289 Ill. 339, 345, 124 N. E. 575; Com. v. Pierce, 138 Mass. 165, 52 Am. Rep. 264; Aiken v. Street Railway, 184 Mass. 271, 68 N. E. 238; State v. Lester, 127 Minn. 285,149 N. W. 297, L. R. A. 1915D, 201; State v. Rountree, 181 N. C. 538, 106 S. E. 669; People v. Angelo, 219 App. Div. 646, 221 N. Y. S. 47, 49; 45 Corpus Juris, 1372; 29 Corpus Juris, 1154. In his charge to the jury, the presiding justice inadvertently failed to observe this distinction between civil and criminal negligence, instructing the jury to measure the respondent's guilt by the rules of negligence applicable only to civil cases. The jury were bound by these instructions, State v. Stevens, 53 Me. 548, and must be presumed to have followed them.

After verdict, counsel for the respondent moved for a new trial on the ground, among others, that the verdict was against the law. The motion was denied by the presiding justice, and an appeal taken to the law court under Rev. St. c. 136, § 28. No exception to this erroneous instruction was reserved.

In our practice, in civil cases, errors of law are not as a general rule open to review on a motion for a new trial directed to this court. The same general rule applies to statutory appeals in criminal eases. The appropriate practice is to present such errors to this court in a bill of exceptions, and a departure from this practice is not to be encouraged.

In civil cases, however, an exception to this general rule has been recognized, and where, and only where, manifest error in law has occurred in the trial of cases and injustice would otherwise inevitably result, the law of the case may be examined upon a motion for a new trial on the ground that the verdict is against the law, and the verdict, if clearly wrong, set aside. Pierce v. Rodliff, 95 Me. 346, 348, 50 A. 32; Simonds v. Maine T. & T. Co., 104 Me. 440, 443, 72 A. 175, 28 L. R. A. (N. S.) 942.

The same exception must be recognized in the review of criminal appeals. In this state the principles applicable to the review of civil trials on a general motion govern appeals in criminal cases. State v. Dodge, 124 Me. 243, 245, 127 A. 899; State v. Stain et al., 82 Me. 472, 489, 20 A. 72. And so, in its review of criminal appeals, where the single question considered under the appeal was whether the verdict was against the evidence, this court has repeatedly ruled that the only question there to be determined was whether, in view...