60 Ala. 10 | Ala. | 1877
The record disproves the assertion, that no list of the jurors summoned for the trial of the prisoner was served on him, as the law directs; and we think the oath administered to the jury, was, in every repect, full and complete. The statement of the record is, “And the said jury, so impanneled as aforesaid, were sworn and charged well and truly the issue joined to try, wherein the State of Alabama is plaintiff, and Robert Washington, the prisoner at the bar, is defendant on trial, and a true verdict to render according to the evidence.” The word sioorn, used in the connection above, ex vi termini imports that they were sworn according to the formula observed in our courts of justice ; and the residue of the recital conforms substantially to the statute. — Code of 1876, §4765.
"We have given expression to these reflections, not with any view of pronouncing on the facts. That is not for us. Our sole object is, that we may pronounce on the correctness of the charges asked and refused, in the light of the testimony before the jury. All the charges asked were properly refused, under the state of the proof before the jury. They were well calculated to mislead, by withholding from their consideration one of the most damaging tendencies of the testimony. They ignore, altogether, the reckless discharge of a loaded pistol, pointed, at short range, directly towards persons sitting quietly together, unconscious of danger; and the inference arising therefrom, of a depraved mind, regardless of human life. To have justified the giving of. either of the charges, the jury should have been told that, to constitute such mitigation of the offense, it was necessary that there should be an absence of that depraved mind, which does not regard human life. — 2 Whar. Cr. Law, §§ 965, 997. Sport does not usually employ such dangerous methods as were resorted to in this case ; and before the jury are justified in inferring the less wicked motive, sought in the charges to be inferred, they should be affirmatively convinced that there was not the depraved mind, which the recklessness of the act tended to show.
The affirmative charge of the court is a correct exposition of the law.
The judgment of the court is affirmed.