Walker v. State

• Decision Date: 08 December 1856
• Parties: Walker v. The State
• Court: Indiana Supreme Court

8 Ind. 266

Walker v. The State

Supreme Court of Indiana

December 8, 1856

From the Vanderburgh Circuit Court.

The judgment is affirmed with costs.

J. J Chandler, for appellant.

C Baker and M. S. Johnson, for the State.

OPINION

Davison J.

This prosecution is founded on section 9, of the act defining felonies, which declares that, "Every person who shall perpetrate an assault, or an assault and battery, and an intent to commit a felony, shall, upon conviction thereof, be imprisoned in the State prison," etc. 2 R. S. p. 397. The charge in the indictment is that Walker, the defendant, on, etc., at, etc., committed an assault and battery on Charles Anderson, with intent him, the said Charles Anderson, to kill and murder, etc. Plea, not guilty. Verdict for the State. New trial refused, and judgment.

The facts are substantially these: Anderson, about noon on the 16th of April, 1856, went to the defendant's house in the city of Evansville, where he found him and one Mitchell, sitting with their shoes off, and requested them to go with him to the river and help him to launch his skiff. Mitchell slipped on a pair of shoes and started with him, Anderson, defendant saying at the time that he would be along presently. Mitchell and Anderson went down to the skiff, where they casually met with one James Pulman. They were standing in a crowd at the skiff, with their backs to the river bank. While they were thus standing together, the defendant was seen to run with a gun in his hands, from his house to the bank of the river, and when he got there, to fire at some object below the bank. By this shot Anderson and Mitchell were both wounded. It was proved that the defendant, immediately after the wounds were inflicted, declared that, "he would kill any one that would take his shoes; that he intended to kill him." One witness testified, that when the defendant made the above declaration, he mentioned Mitchell as the person who took his shoes, or mentioned his name in that connection; and Mitchell himself, on his examination as a witness, admitted that he had taken them. For the same shooting charged in the present case, the defendant had been previously put on his trial on a charge of committing an assault and battery on Mitchell, with an intent to murder him, and had been found guilty of an assault and battery only, and judgment on such finding had passed, etc.

The evidence being closed, the Court charged the jury that "If the defendant fired into the crowd in question, of which Anderson, the prosecuting witness was one, with the deliberate intention, either formed at the time or previously, of killing and murdering some one of the crowd, and that Anderson received a portion of the shot and contents...