Warner v. State

• Citation: 56 N.J.L. 686,29 A. 505
• Parties: WARNER v. STATE.
• Decision Date: 18 June 1894
• Court: United States State Supreme Court (New Jersey)

29 A. 505

56 N.J.L. 686

WARNER

v. STATE.

Court of Errors and Appeals of New Jersey.

June 18, 1894.

(Syllabus by the Court.)

Error to supreme court. Wesley Warner was convicted of murder, and brings error. Affirmed.

Charles E. Hendrickson, for plaintiff in error. Eckard P. Budd, for the State.

REED, J. On September 18, 1892, Wesley Warner killed Elizabeth Peak. They had been illicitly consorting. On the night of the 18th he was at the house of the girl's parents. He had been drinking. During the evening he left the house, taking with him a butcher knife. He was next seen lying in the road, by the two sisters of the girl, and some young men who were accompanying the three women home. Warner rose from the ground, caught Lizzie, and struck her with the knife, from which blow, in a few minutes, she fell dead. For this deed he was tried, and convicted of murder in the first degree.

The noticeable assignments of errors are confined to three points. The first concerns the refusal of the court to charge certain requests in respect to the effect of the intoxication of the defendant upon the degree of his criminality. The first of these requests was the following: "That if the defendant was at the time in such a state of intoxication that his mind was incapable of premeditating the fatal blow, with the intent to take life, and his reason was deprived of the power to think and weigh the nature of the act, and the consequences of the act, then the offense committed cannot be more than murder in the second degree." The court charged, generally, that: "If the defendant was mentally capable of conceiving a design to take the life of the woman, and he did conceive such a design, and if you are satisfied that, in pursuance of a design thus conceived, he purposely inflicted the fatal blow, then he was guilty of murder in the first degree. Whereas, if you find that he was incapable, from the condition of his mind, of conceiving such a purpose, or that in point of fact he had not fully conceived such a purpose, and acted, in striking the fatal blow, not from design, but from sudden and motiveless—or from uncontrollable, because drunken—violence, then he is not guilty of murder in the first degree, but guilty of murder in the second degree." In respect to the request already set out, the court remarked: "I decline to charge that he must have weighed the consequences of the act. if he intended to kill, whether he took into consideration all of the possible consequences of the act, I do not think is material." Assuming that the theory upon which the request to charge and the charge were formed is correct, namely, that a degree of drunkenness which obliterates from the mind of a homicide all intention to take life, reduces the degree of the crime, I yet fail to see any error in the general language of this charge, or in the response to the request. The point was clearly presented to the jury that the question was whether there existed a design to take life. This design involved the consequences of the act committed, in respect of the result of the blow, namely, whether the use of the knife was likely to kill. The request involved an irrelevant consideration. It included also a submission of the question of the ability of the defendant to apprehend what punishment would follow the killing.

There is an assignment also to the refusal of the judge to charge the language of a request framed as follows: "That if, upon the whole evidence, the jury have a reasonable doubt whether, at the time of the killing, defendant had, as the result of intoxication, or its after effects, sufficient mental capacity to deliberately think upon, and rationally determine to kill the deceased, they cannot find him guilty of murder in the first degree." The response of the court was: "I have charged that the prisoner must have been able to form, and must have formed, a design to take life, which was not the result of mere sudden passion or of intoxication, and I refuse to charge otherwise." Now, the court had already charged that: "If there be, in regard to any fact, any condition of doubt in the mind of a juror, of that character which has been described as 'reasonable doubt,' * * * that doubt should be resolved in favor of the defendant." Then follows a full and accurate statement of the legal idea of the term "reasonable doubt." The court is not obliged to reiterate the same idea in every possible lingual shape in which it may be framed in different requests. Design to kill was a fact. A reasonable doubt of the existence of that fact might spring out of the drunkenness of defendant, or out of any other circumstance, or combination of drunkenness with other circumstances. A charge that the defendant was entitled to the benefit of a reasonable duobt as to any fact the state was bound to prove involved, necessarily, the proposition that, if there was a reasonable doubt whether drunkenness deprived the defendant of this intent to kill, he could not be convicted of murder in the first degree.

The fourth request was as follows: "That though the jury should find that, at the time the blow was struck, the defendant was not so drunk as to be incapable of forming the premeditated and deliberate intent to kill, yet if the jury, in considering the effects of his intoxication, with all the other facts, should find that the purpose to kill the deceased, if any, was formed in passion or jealous rage, produced upon his mind, excited by liquor, upon suddenly finding the deceased in company with another man on the road, then it would reduce the offense to murder in the second degree." The fifth request was to the same purport. These requests were refused, except as before charged. The substance of these requests was that the jury should be instructed that a killing accomplished with the design to take life, uninduced by any provocation which would reduce it to the degree of manslaughter, could be reduced to murder in the second degree by the intervention of the partial intoxication of the offender. The general proposition is that drunkenness is no excuse for crime. The reasoning upon which, in those states in which murder is distinguished by degrees, drunkenness is permitted to modify the degree of the crime, rests upon one requirement essential to constitute murder in the first degree. This requirement is the existence of actual, specific malice,—of an actual intent to take life. Without this, there is no crime in that degree. Any condition of fact, whether drunkenness or other circumstance, which shows the nonexistence of this kind of actual malice, is relevant, not as an excuse for crime, but as showing that no statutory crime at all, of the degree named, was committed. This is the theory upon which all the cases go which recognize drunkenness as an element in the ascertainment of the degree of murder. State v. Johnson, 40 Conn. 136, 41 Conn. 585; Roberts v. People, 19 Mich. 401; Pigman v. State, 14 Ohio, 555; Shannahan v. Com., 8 Bush, 463; Jones v. Com., 75 Pa. St. 403; Com. v. Dorsey, 103 Mass. 412. It is to be remarked that these cases carry the rule no further than this. In respect to murder in the second degree, it is said in State v. Johnson, 41 Conn. 585, that a conviction is supported by implied malice, and that, therefore, if a drunken man takes the life of another, unaccompanied with circumstances of provocation or justification, a jury will be warranted in finding the existence of malice, though no express malice is proved. Intoxication, which is itself a crime against society, combines with the act of killing, and the evil intent to take life, which necessarily accompanies it, and all together afford sufficient ground for implying malice. This is the rule which has always obtained in respect to crimes requiring no specific intent, committed by drunken parties. Although the drunken man may do a criminal act unintentionally, yet the intent to get drunk coalesces with the act, and combines act and intent. 1 Bish. Cr. Law, § 400. The exceptional immunity extended to the drunkard is limited to those...