Wrye v. State

• Decision Date: 30 March 1896
• Citation: Wrye v. State, 99 Ga. 34, 25 S.E. 610 (Ga. 1896)
• Parties: WRYE. v. STATE.
• Court: Georgia Supreme Court

99 Ga. 34

25 S.E. 610

WRYE.

v.STATE.

Supreme Court of Georgia.

March 30, 1896.

Homicide—Instructions—Voluntary Manslaughter.

1. Where a homicide was committed with a knife, under circumstances which would have made a case of voluntary manslaughter if it had appeared either that there was an actual intention to kill, or that the weapon, considered in connection with the manner in which it was used, was of such character as that the law would conclusively imply the existence of such intention, yet where there was no evidence as to the size, length, or kind of knife used, other than what could be inferred from the nature of the wounds inflicted, and these were not such as to show that the knife must necessarily have been a deadly weapon, and where, under all the evidence and the statement of the accused, it was an open question whether or not the killing was voluntary or involuntary, the law of involuntary manslaughter should have been given in charge to the jury, especially where an appropriate request to this effect was presented in writing by counsel for the accused; and the failure to do so is cause for 8 new trial.

2. Except as above indicated, the case, as presented by the record, discloses no cause for reversing the judgment of the trial court.

(Syllabus by the Court.)

Error from superior court, Tattnall county; R. L. Gamble, Judge.

W. W. Wrye was convicted of homicide, and brings error. Reversed.

Garrard, Meldrim & Newman, Lee & Giles, and Hines & Hale, for plaintiff in error.

D.B. Evans, Jr., Sol. Gen., and J. A. Anderson, for the State.

ATKINSON, J. The defendant, Wrye, was indicted for the offense of murder. Upon the trial the evidence showed that, as he was passing along near the place where the deceased was at work, the latter came out, advanced towards the accused, and as he reached him they became instantly engaged in an angry controversy, resulting in a personal conflict, in which the deceased was so severely stabbed that he died within a few days from the effects of the wounds inflicted. The wounds were inflicted with a knife, the size and character of which does not appear. Nor does the description given of the wounds indicate that they must have been inflicted with a weapon likely to produce death. The wounds inflicted were described as follows: "The cause of his death was a stab wound in the left side, inflicted with some sharp instrument, just back of the left breast, a little below a line drawn across the breast. That is the wound that ...