Winter v. StateWinter v. State
The trial court’s discretion as to granting or refusing continuance was not abused in this case. It not only put the State to an admission of
It cannot be said that the age of the deceased at the time of the difficulty between him and defendant in which they fought with their fists and with sticks, was immaterial and irrelevant. And there was no error in allowing the witness Wilson who had known him for more than twenty years to testify that to the best of his judgment he was a man about forty-five years of age. Weed v. State,
The defendant was tried under an indictment charging murder in the second degree. He was convicted of manslaughter in the first degree. It would seem that on this state of case errors, if any, committed by the trial court in defining lhurder in the second degree and expounding the law in respect thereto should be held to have involved no injury to the defendant. — Fallin v. State,
What we have just said applies also to that part of the court’s charge which declares that malice may be presumed from the use of a deadly weapon; and, moreover, this was certainly not abstract for on the evidence as to the stick used by defendant, the stick itself being in evi
That one may be guilty of homicide by a bloAv not of itself mortal but Avhich accelerates death, is a proposition supported by the old case of Morea v. State, 2 Alá. 275, and many other authorities.—Tidwell v. State,
We find the general charge of the court as to the evidence of the deceased’s character for violence, etc., to mean only this, that on the question of guilt vel non such evidence is immaterial Avhere the accused Avas the aggressor; and this is undoubtedly a sound exposition of the Iuav. If such evidence may be looked to by the jury after they find the defendant guilty in measuring his punishment, (for AA’hich there Avoulcl seem to be no Avarra'nt of Iuav, but AA'hich Ave do not decide as the point is not in the case), the charge gWen by the court did not preclude their doing so.
There Avas evidence before the jury that the defendant Avas drunk at the time of the fatal difficulty; and it Avas, therefore, the court’s duty to instruct the jury as to the bearing of this eAudence upon the question of his guilt. In the conclusion of a correct statement of the Iuav in this connection the court said: “Slight drunkenness or intoxication might tend to aggravate a crime instead of
It may be that there are things human that are not subject to any kind of doubt; but when the court is speaking of a reasonable doubt arising upon human testimony, and certainly to the exclusion of such doubt on the testimony of witnesses, it is not conceivable Ihoav the jury could be misled to the defendant’s prejudice by the remark that “eArerything human is subject to some kind of doubt.” The statement being made in the connection it was meant no more than that all human testimony is susceptible of some sort of doubt in the sense that it does not establish facts Aidth mathematical certainty.
The foregoing are the only quetions treated of in the brief of appellant’s counsel. There are others reserved on the record, and we have examined them and found them to involve no error; but Ave deem it unnecessary to discuss them.
Affirmed.