Warren v. State
| Decision Date | 15 November 1926 |
| Docket Number | 5391. |
| Parties | WARREN v. STATE. |
| Court | Georgia Supreme Court |
Syllabus by the Court.
Under the special facts in the case, it was not cause for the grant of a new trial that the judge gave brief additional instructions to the jury, in the presence of the defendant but during voluntary absence of his counsel, upon questions that he had unintentionally omitted from his general charge.
The court was duly requested in writing to charge as follows upon the subject of reasonable doubt: "If you have a reasonable doubt growing out of the evidence or want of evidence or from the defendant's statement as to whether the accused acted, when he stabbed the deceased, under circumstances calculated to excite the fears of a reasonable man, or whether he felt at the time he stabbed him and had reason to feel from the circumstances that it was necessary to stab the decedent to save his life, limb, or person, then he was justifiable and you should acquit him, even though you should believe from the evidence in the case that he stabbed and killed the decedent." Conceding that this instruction was correct and appropriate, the refusal to give it is not cause for the grant of a new trial in this case especially in view of the actual charge by the court upon the subject of reasonable doubt and the charge upon the subject of self-defense, embraced in the instructions as given.
The court did not err in refusing a request to give in charge to the jury the following: There is nothing in the statement of the defendant or in the evidence in the case that would authorize a charge upon the subject of mutual combat on the theory that the defendant and the deceased "presently agreed and fetched their weapons and fought."
The court did not err in refusing a request to charge the following: "If you believe from the evidence or from the statement of the defendant that the weapon alleged to have been used by the defendant in producing the death of the decedent was not a weapon which was likely to produce death and which was not used in a manner which would naturally tend to destroy the life of a human being, you would be authorized and it would be your duty to find the defendant guilty of involuntary manslaughter." If the defendant, without provocation (as the evidence tends to indicate), cut and stabbed the deceased with a knife, and thereby inflicted a wound from which he died, he was guilty of murder, and his crime would not be that of involuntary manslaughter.
The ruling just made is applicable to another request to charge similar to that last dealt with, contained in the sixth ground of the amendment to the motion for a new trial.
The court did not err in declining to charge upon the subject of involuntary manslaughter.
The court's charge upon the subject of voluntary manslaughter and upon the subject of justifiable homicide, which immediately followed the charge upon voluntary manslaughter, was not confusing and misleading to the jury in that it tended to impress the jury (as the movant contends) with the fact that the law of justifiable homicide was a part of the law of manslaughter.
Error is assigned upon the following charge of the court: "I charge you, further, that you look to the defendant's statement and see whether or not he said in his statement that he killed Robert Wilson, either in self-defense to save his own life or to prevent a felony from being committed upon him; and if you find he did make that statement, then you look to all the circumstances surrounding him at the time he did the killing, if you find that he did the killing, and if you find that he said that he did it, if you find that he admitted the killing, the law then puts upon him the burden to satisfy the jury that he was justified under some rule of law, unless the evidence in the case, taken from the witnesses or the statement of the defendant, shows justification or mitigation." This charge, may be somewhat lacking in precision and accuracy, but in view of the evidence and the statement of the prisoner, it is not cause for the grant of a new trial by this court. Mann v. State, 124 Ga. 760, 53 S.E. 324, 4 L.R.A. (N. S.) 934.
The court charged the jury as follows: Movant insists that the above-quoted excerpt from the charge is error, "for the reason that the court, just before the words 'intending or endeavoring,' omitted the word 'manifestly,' and, by omitting the word 'manifestly,' thereby restricted and qualified the law of self-defense, and thereby deprived this defendant of the benefit of said law." There is no merit in this contention. If it made any substantial change of the rule as stated to the jury it was not a change that was hurtful, but to the contrary.
The ruling made in the last preceding headnote is applicable also to the exception to the excerpt from the charge set forth in the eleventh ground of the amendment to the motion for a new trial.
Another excerpt from the charge excepted to is as follows: "Legal malice" is not ill will or hatred. It is an unlawful intention to kill, without justification or mitigation, which intention, however, must exist at the time of the killing alleged, but it is not necessary for that intention to exist for any length of time before the killing; in legal contemplation, a man may form the intention to kill, do the killing instantly, and regret the deed as soon as it is done." This was not error on the ground urged, that "it contained an intimation by the court to the jury that the defendant had malice at the time of the killing, and that he killed the deceased with malice and without justification or mitigation and immediately regretted the deed."
[Ed. Note.-For other definitions, see Words and Phrases, First and Second Series, Legal Malice.]
The law of voluntary manslaughter as related to the doctrine of mutual combat was not involved under the evidence in the case, though it may be involved under the prisoner's statement; but a request to charge which assumed there was evidence to show mutual combat was properly refused.
Error from Superior Court, Miller County; M. J. Yeomans, Judge.
Henry Warren was convicted of murder, and he brings error. Affirmed.
P. Z. Geer, of Colquitt, and Chester A. Drake, of Blakely, for plaintiff in error.
B. T. Castellow, Sol. Gen., of Cuthbert, Geo. M. Napier, Atty. Gen., T. R. Gress, Asst. Atty. Gen., and R. R. Arnold, of Atlanta, for the State.
Henry Warren was tried under an indictment charging him with the offense of murder. The person alleged to have been murdered was Robert Wilson. Jim Kemp, introduced as a witness by the state, testified, in substance, that he knew Robert Wilson; that Henry Warren killed him on the third Sunday in July, 1925. He was an eyewitness of the fact. He was present at a party at the house of one John Bird, where a considerable number of people were gathered. Witness was in the room where the killing occurred. He was sitting in a chair, and a woman by the name of Rosa Barber was sitting in his lap. This woman made a remark very derogatory to another woman in the room. The other woman walked away, and a few minutes after that Henry Warren and John Bird were standing close to the door. Warren said:
"Cut this _____ fuss out, you _____ sons of bitches, before I kill every one of you."
He then ran into Robert Wilson, about two steps from the witness, and shoved him with his left hand, and stabbed him. Wilson did not go towards Warren at all. Warren had a knife in his hand, and shoved Wilson and stabbed him; he had a knife open when he ran into Wilson. Wilson was standing with a cigarette in his hand, preparing to light it. Warren stabbed him a little above the collarbone, in the front part of the neck. Wilson ran out and up to a wire fence, fell, and died almost immediately. Witness did not see any weapon in Wilson's hand.
Willie Grimsley, another eyewitness to the killing, gave...
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