Wooten v. State
| Decision Date | 10 June 1897 |
| Citation | 41 S.W. 813,99 Tenn. 189 |
| Parties | WOOTEN v. STATE. |
| Court | Tennessee Supreme Court |
Appeal from criminal court, Shelby county; L. P. Cooper, Judge.
Cap Wooten was convicted of voluntary manslaughter, and appeals. Reversed.
Peters & Roberts & Norfleet, for appellant.
The Attorney General, for the State.
Cap Wooten was indicted and tried in the criminal court of Shelby county for the murder of Gustave Blanz, was convicted of voluntary manslaughter, and sentenced to two years' imprisonment in the penitentiary. Motions in arrest of judgment and for a new trial were overruled, and he appealed in error.
Blanz and Wooten, respectively, were supporters of rival candidates for constable at a primary election held in the city of Memphis, on the 15th day of June, 1896. Late in the afternoon of that day, they met near the polling place on Main street and had some short and angry words. Blanz was old and feeble Wooten young and vigorous. Soon after their altercation at the polls, and not far from the same place, they met again and, with or without further intercourse between them, Wooten delivered a blow with his fist at the face of Blanz, who fell to the ground, his head striking the pavement with great force, and never regained consciousness. Bystanders soon carried Blanz into a saloon near by, and, after a short time he was taken thence by police officers, in a patrol wagon, to the police station, where he remained, unattended and prostrate, upon the floor, for hours. The notion that he was only "dead drunk" seems to have prevailed with the city officials observing him; and for that reason, no doubt, his case did not receive medical attention until after the middle of the night. About 1 o'clock in the morning, his condition was discovered by physicians to be very critical; and, after careful examination, the consensus of opinion among those in attendance was that the patient had a blood clot on the brain, and that a surgical operation was advisable and necessary. Thereupon the "deeply unconscious" man was removed from the station house floor, where he had lain unattended for six or seven hours, to the operating room of the St. Joseph Hospital; and there his skull was trepanned, and two circular pieces of bone were cut out, near together, and under the external wound on the side of the head. Then the bone intervening between the two holes made in the skull by the sawing and removal of the buttons was cut away, and a final examination was made. The exploration was unsuccessful, in that it failed to disclose a blood clot on the brain, and gave the patient no relief. Blanz died about noon of the day of the operation, never having recovered consciousness from the time of his fall upon the pavement, some 18 hours before his death. An autopsy was had, and the whole top of the skull taken off. Beneath the dura mater, over and under the frontal lobe of the brain, and diametrically opposite the point from which the buttons of bone had been taken, was discovered an extensive blood clot. Thus, the diagnosis of attending physicians seems to be amply verified. Experts upon the subject say that a blood clot upon the brain, caused by a blow on the head, is to be expected first under the external injury, and, if not found there, then it may be looked for, with certainty of discovery, in a direct line, on the opposite side, and at the point furthest from the outward injury. That the sudden and continued unconsciousness of Blanz, and his death, resulted from a clot of blood on his brain, is not to be doubted from the record. Responsibility for the blood clot, however, was a matter of contention and debate at the trial in the court below. The theory of the state was that Wooten, without provocation, and with malice, premeditation, and deliberation, knocked Blanz down, and caused his head to strike the pavement so violently as to rupture a blood vessel, and thereby produce the blood clot, which resulted in his death. The defendant, on the other hand, advanced several alternate propositions, upon any and all of which he claimed an acquittal. His contention was that he struck at the deceased upon adequate provocation, and in his proper self-defense; that the deceased, without fault of defendant, overbalanced himself, and fell upon the pavement; that the deceased was an habitual drunkard, and, by his excessive intemperance, himself caused the clot of blood to form on his brain about the time of his falling upon the pavement; that the deceased was so recklessly thrown from the patrol wagon against one of the wheels, and upon the floor of the station house, as to produce the blood clot; and, finally, that death may have resulted from the trepanning operation, as an independent cause. The state introduced several witnesses whose testimony tended to establish its theory of the case; and the defendant had some testimony in favor of each of his propositions and contentions.
The trial judge correctly defined the different grades of unlawful homicide and self-defense in his charge to the jury and made some appropriate hypothetical and illustrative applications thereof, after which he gave other instructions, that are objected to as erroneous and prejudicial to the rights of the defendant. One of these instructions is as follows: This is not a sound legal proposition. If, by his action, the defendant in fact hastened the death of the deceased, he was obviously guilty of some degree of felonious homicide, provided his action was unlawful; but not so if he acted lawfully. The instruction does not contain this proviso, and for that reason is fatally defective and erroneous. If the defendant's action was lawful, as upon adequate provocation and reasonable apprehension of death or great bodily harm, he was guilty...
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