Williams v. State

• Decision Date: 30 June 1915
• Docket Number: 194
• Parties: WILLIAMS v. STATE.
• Court: Alabama Court of Appeals

69 So. 376

13 Ala.App. 133

WILLIAMS v. STATE.

No. 194

Court of Appeals of Alabama

June 30, 1915

Appeal from Circuit Court, Elmore County; W.W. Pearson, Judge.

Sid Williams was convicted of an assault with intent to murder one Boddie, and he appeals. Affirmed.

The facts sufficiently appear. The defendant excepted to the following portions of the court's oral charge:

The burden with respect to that proposition rests upon the defendant to create in your mind a reasonable doubt of his ability to form an intent; the presumption being that every man has the capacity to form an intent.

The following charges were refused the defendant:

(1) If there is any one fact arising out of the evidence which is sufficient to create a reasonable doubt in the mind of the jury, then you should find the defendant not guilty.

(19) Similar to 1.

(2) Before the jury can convict the defendant, they must be satisfied to a moral certainty, not only that the proof is consistent with defendant's guilt, but that it is wholly inconsistent with every other rational conclusion, etc.

(10) Motive on the part of the defendant in the committing of the assault need not be shown, but the entire absence of motive may generate a reasonable doubt in the mind of the jury arising out of all the evidence which would negative the criminal intent.

Charges 3, 4, 5, 7, and 8 were based on the doctrine of self-defense.

(20) After considering all the evidence, if the jury have a reasonable doubt of the guilt of the defendant, they will give the benefit of the doubt to the defendant, and return a verdict of not guilty.

(21) If the evidence or part thereof, after a consideration of the whole of such evidence, generates a well-founded doubt of the defendant's guilt, the jury must acquit.

(23) If any member of the jury have a reasonable doubt of the defendant's guilt, growing out of any part of the testimony, on a consideration of all the testimony, then the jury should not find the defendant guilty.

(17) The burden is on the state to convince you beyond a reasonable doubt that the defendant committed the offense as charged in the indictment, and that at the time he was mentally capable of forming the intent, and, if the state has failed to so convince you, then you cannot convict the defendant of an assault with intent to murder.

J.M Holley, Frank W. Lull, and Geo. F. Smoot, all of Wetumpka for appellant.

W.L Martin, Atty. Gen., and J.P. Mudd, Asst. Atty. Gen., for the State.

BROWN, J.

It is elementary that when a person does an act legally wrong in itself, and the accomplished act is a crime, the law will presume the criminal intent from the act. Dotson v State, 62 Ala. 145, 34 Am.Rep. 2; Stein v State, 37 Ala. 123; Hoover v. State, 59 Ala. 57; Bain v. State, 61 Ala. 75; Gordon v. State, 52 Ala. 308, 23 Am.Rep. 575; Sullivan v. State, 102 Ala. 143, 15 So. 264, 48 Am.St.Rep. 22. The law presumes a person intends to do that which he does and designed the necessary consequences of his act, unless it is shown to the contrary. McElroy v. State, 75 Ala. 9; 1 Greenl.Ev. § 18; 4 Cooley's Bl.Com. 222 N (4).

But the presumption goes no further, and when an assault is committed by means and in a manner that is calculated to produce death, yet death does not ensue, an intent to murder does not arise as a necessary consequence of the assault. Hence the rule in cases of assault with intent to murder, and like offenses, that the burden is upon the state to offer evidence that satisfies beyond a reasonable doubt that at the time of the assault the defendant entertained the intent essential to constitute the act a felony. Whitten v. State, 115 Ala. 72, 22 So. 483; Martin v. State, 119 Ala. 1, 25 So. 255; Wharton v. State, 73 Ala. 366; Clemons v. State, 167 Ala. 33, 52 So. 467. A contrary doctrine was announced in Fonville v. State, 91 Ala. 39, 8 So. 688, but that doctrine is expressly repudiated in Whitten v. State and Clemons v. State, supra.

While proof of the intent to murder is an element of the burden of proof resting on the state, this intent is not susceptible of positive proof, but rests in inference to be drawn by the jury from all the evidence in the case. Reeves v. State, 95 Ala. 31, 11 So. 158; Whitten v. State, supra.

For the purpose of rebutting any inference of the intent to murder arising from the nature of the assault and the acts and conduct of the accused, it was competent for him to show that when the assault was committed he was intoxicated to such a degree that he was incapable of forming and entertaining the intent to murder. Gater v. State, 141 Ala. 17, 37 So. 692; James v. State, 69 So. 569; Waldrop v. State, 185 Ala. 23, 64 So. 80; Walker v. State, 91 Ala. 76, 9 So. 87; McCormack v. State, 102 Ala. 156, 15 So. 438; Underhill, Cr.Ev. § 166.

The assault was committed between sundown and dark on May 5, 1914, and the defendant reached his home between 10 and 11 o'clock that night. There is no evidence of self-defense in the case, and therefore the condition of the defendant at the time he reached his home was, so far as this record shows, wholly immaterial, and the court did not err in sustaining the objection of the solicitor to the question asked Mrs. Williams seeking to elicit testimony as to the condition of the accused when he arrived at his home.

It was not error for the court to sustain the objection to the question asked the witness Mrs. Williams seeking to elicit testimony as to her opportunity for observing "the effect a few drinks of whisky have upon the defendant." James v. State, supra.

The court ruled correctly in sustaining the objection of the solicitor to questions eliciting testimony as to mental weakness and fits or hallucinations of the defendant. This evidence was not admissible in the absence of a plea of "not guilty by reason of insanity." Code 1907, § 7176; Morrell v. State, 136 Ala. 44, 34 South. 208; Ward v. State, 96 Ala. 100, 11 So. 217; Walker v. State, 91 Ala. 76, 9 So. 87.

No prejudice resulted from the action of the court in sustaining the objection to the question asked the defendant as to what effect whisky had on him after he was injured. The defendant was allowed to testify fully that he remembered nothing that occurred after they met Franklin and took a drink with him, and knew nothing about the assault.

The evidence in this case establishes without dispute, or room for adverse inference, that the assault was committed with a shotgun, the charge therefrom entering one of Boddie's arms, almost severing it from his body, and after he was shot down that defendant beat him over the head with such terrific blows that the gun was...