150 Ga. 92 | Ga. | 1920
Hnder an indictment charging J. T. McBride with the murder of Joe Bailey, he was found guilty as charged, with a recommendation of life imprisonment. He excepted to the overruling of his motion for a new trial. One of the grounds of the motion is that the court erred in charging the jury as follows: “A witness may be impeached by disproving the facts testified to by him. A witness may be impeached by contradictory state
Error is assigned, in the motion for a new trial, upon the following excerpts from the judge’s charge: “In cases of homicide, I charge you further that where the killing is shown to have been by the defendant on trial by the use of a deadly weapon, beyond a reasonable doubt, or is admitted, and all the evidence adduced to establish it shows neither mitigation nor' justification nor excuse, malice will be presumed, from proof of the homicide, that the killing was murder; but this presumption is a rebuttable one, and may be overcome by evidence of excuse, or alleviation, or justification.” “In other words, the law presumes every homicide resulting from the use of a deadly weapon to be felonious, until the contrary appears from circumstances of excuse or justification
The rulings announced in the third, fourth, fifth, and sixth headnotes require no elaboration.
Judgment affirmed.