28 Tenn. 663 | Tenn. | 1849
delivered the opinion of the court.
The prisoner was convicted of the crime of murder in the second degree, at the August term, 1848, of the Circuit Court of Madison; upon the trial it was proved
This is no new question, presented for the first time for consideration, but one of the earliest consideration in the law of offences; one which has been again and again adjudicated by the courts of Great Britain, and the United States, and, as we apprehend, with a consistent uniformity rarely to be met with in questions of alike interest and importance. Upon the subject we have nothing to discover, no new principle to lay dowri, no philosophical investigation to enter into, in relation to mental sanity or insanity, but only to, ascertain how the law upon this subject has been heretofore adjudged, and so to adjudge it ourselves. Lord Hale in his history of the pleas of the Ci’own, page 32, says: “ The third sort of madness is that which is dementia affectata, namely, drunkenness. This vice doth deprive a man of his reason, and puts many men into a perfect but temporary phrenzy; but by the laws of England, such a person shall have no privilege by his voluntarily contracted madness, but shall have the same judgment as if he were in his right senses.” In the case of Reniger vs. Fogosa, Plow. 19, it was laid down as a rule, “that if a person that is drunk kills another, this shall be felony and he shall be hanged for it; and yet he did it through ignorance; for when he was
The legal correctness of the general statement of the court is abundantly sustained by a long and unshaken series of authorities in ancient and modern times, and by none more strongly and fully than by this court, in the case referred to in Martin’s and Yerger’s
But although drunkenness, in point of law, constitutes no excuse or justification for crime, still, when the nature and essence of a crime is made to depend by law, upon the peculiar state and condition of the criminal’s mind at the time, and with reference to the act done, drunkenness, as a matter of fact affecting such state and condition of the mind, is a proper subject for consideration and inquiry by the jury.
The question in such case is, what is the mental status ? Is it one of self possession favorable to the formation of a fixed purpose, by deliberation and premeditation, or did the act spring from existing passion excited by inadequate provocation, acting it may be on a peculiar temperament, or upon one already excited by ardent spirits. In such case it matters not that the provocation was inadequate, or the spirits voluntarily drank; the question is, did the act proceed from sudden passion or from deliberation or premeditation. What was the mental status at the time of the act, and with reference to the act?' To regard the fact of intoxication as meriting consideration in such a case, is not to hold that drunkenness will excuse crime, but to inquire whether the very crime which the law defines and punishes, has been in point of fact committed.
If the mental status required by law to constitute crime be one of deliberation and premeditation, and drunkenness or other cause excludes the existence of such mental state, then the crime is not excused by drunkenness or such other cause, but has not in fact been committed.”
This reasoning is alone applicable to cases of murder under our act of 1829, chap. 23, which provides “ that all
Then it will frequently happen necessarily, when the killing is of such a charactér as the common law designates as murder, and it has not been perpetrated by means of poison, or by lying in wait, that it will be a vexed [¡question whether the killing has been the result of sudden passion, produced by a cause inadequate to mitigate it to manslaughter, but still sufficient to mitigate it to murder in the
If a drunken man commit wilful, deliberate, malicious, and premeditated murder, he is in legal estimation guilty as if he were sober. If he do it by means of poison knowingly administered, or by lying in wait, these facts are ■ as conclusive evidence against him as if he had been sober. If from the proof, in the absence of such lying in wait, or administering of poison, it shall appear, that the killing was wilful, deliberate, malicious, and premeditated, he is guilty as though he was sober. But in ascertaining the fact of such intention, all the concomitant circumstances shall be heard, in order to enable the jury to judge, whether such deliberate, wilful, malicious, and premeditated design existed, or whether the killing was not the result of sudden heat and passion, produced by
We then think the circuit judge committed no error in his charge to the jury in this case, and affirm the judgment.