Drewry v. State

63 S.E.2d 429, 83 Ga. App. 354, 1951 Ga. App. LEXIS 867
CourtCourt of Appeals of Georgia
DecidedFebruary 1, 1951
Docket33271
StatusPublished
Cited by2 cases

This text of 63 S.E.2d 429 (Drewry v. State) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Court of Appeals of Georgia primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
Drewry v. State, 63 S.E.2d 429, 83 Ga. App. 354, 1951 Ga. App. LEXIS 867 (Ga. Ct. App. 1951).

Opinions

Gardner, Judge.

1. There was evidence tending to support the verdict. The defendant admitted shooting this woman with a pistol, but she contended: (1) that she was insane at the time of the commission of the offense charged; (2) that she was suffering at the time from “delusional” insanity; and (3) that she was justified in the shooting.

It appeared from the evidence that the defendant and John E. Drewry had been husband and wife, but were divorced and living apart at the time the defendant shot Miriam Thurmond, who later became Mrs. John E. Drewry. The defendant and her former husband had been seeing each other, and on the evening that the defendant shot this woman, John E. Drewry had had dinner with the defendant and their son, age 14 years, in the home of the defendant. Around nine o’clock or later that evening, the defendant telephoned John E. Drewry, and when he did not answer the telephone, she hurriedly dressed, placed a revolver in her pocketbook, borrowed a neighbor’s automobile, and hastened to the home of Miriam Thurmond, and finding her former husband there with Miriam Thurmond [355]*355—as stated by the defendant—in a compromising situation or position, she fired the revolver at each of them, and inflicted wounds upon both him and Miriam Thurmond.

■ The defendant sought to show in her statement that, after the divorce between her husband and herself, she had become his wife under the common law; that there had been a marriage between them; and therefore that, when she found him with Miriam Thurmond in a compromising situation or position, she was justified in shooting the woman to prevent the commission of adultery between them. She also contended that she had become the common-law wife of her former husband and, loving him and because of his being the father of their son, she became —upon seeing them together after he had just left her with assurance of his love for her—suddenly mentally deranged and was insane at the time she fired, sought to kill, and did wound Miriam Thurmond.

The jury resolved these contentions adversely to the defendant. The evidence did not demand a finding by the jury in favor of the defendant as to either of the contentions raised by her, and the motion for new trial on the general grounds was properly overruled.

2. The court refused to give in charge to the jury the following requests: If the jury found “from the evidence, including the defendant’s statement, that the defendant and John E. Drewry by agreement, in words of the present tense, to be man and wife, and being at the time capable of contracting marriage, with the intention thereby and thereupon to assume such relation, that such formal contract would be a valid marriage”; and “if you find such relationship existed between the defendant and John E. Drewry, each would have the mutual right to protect such relationship, and the shooting of a third person by one of them to prevent adultery with the other may be justified by a real or apparent necessity presented by the facts and circumstances as they appear to her at the moment of her interposition to prevent the adultery.” The defendant contended that such failure was error, and says that the principles of law presented in these requests were authorized by the evidence, including the defendant’s statement to the jury. Error is assigned on the refusal of the court so to charge.

[356]*356It does not appear from the defendant’s statement or from the evidence that Miriam Thurmond and John E. Drewry were actually engaged or about to engage in the act of sexual intercourse, which would be, if the jury found the defendant to be the common-law wife of Drewry, adultery. Unless the facts and circumstances were such, when the defendant arrived upon the scene and observed Drewry and Miriam Thurmond together, as to lead a reasonable person to suppose that the act of sexual intercourse was being committed between them, or was about to be committed between them, and that in order to prevent the consummation thereof it was necessary that she shoot the woman, the defendant would not be justifiable under the law with seeking to take the life of the offending party or parties. See Hill v. State, 64 Ga. 453, 467; Mays v. State, 88 Ga. 402 (14 S. E. 560); Baker v. State, 111 Ga. 142 (36 S. E. 607). What did Mrs. Drewry, the defendant, find when she came upon the scene? She said in her statement: “There were . . John E. Drewry and Miriam Thurmond; he was sitting in a low rocking chair, and she on a footstool right close in front of him. They positively were not just sitting there talking, as John reported to the press. I stood watching a long time, engaged with agonizing heartache and despáir. . . Presently I found myself walking into their front door. . . I just stood there watching them nauseated, and frozen with horror.” At the most, from her statement, she found John E. Drewry seated in a chair and the woman seated on a stool in front of him. Neither of them was undressed. They were in the living room of the woman’s home, and her mother and grandmother were in the house. The door to the living room was not fastened. The defendant walked right in. In these circumstances—conceding that the facts authorized a finding by the jury that there existed between Drewry and the defendant a common-law marriage, that is, a marriage as defined in Lefkoff v. Sicro, 189 Ga. 554 (6 S. E. 2d, 687, 133 A. L. R. 738), and that this relationship authorized an application of the provisions of Code, § 26-1016, and the sections therein referred to, and would have justified, in a proper case, the shooting by the defendant of Miss Thurmond—this court is of the opinion that the evidence, including the defendant’s statement, did not authorize a finding that such urgency and necessity existed as to justify the defendant in the shooting.

[357]*357It follows that the court did not err in failing to charge the jury as requested by the defendant, based on her statement only.

3. In the second special ground, the defendant insists that the court should have granted a mistrial, upon timely motion of her counsel, because—during a colloquy between the court and counsel for both sides, occurring during the examination of a witness as to the defendant’s mental state while in the hospital immediately following the shooting of Miss Thurmond, and as she appeared at the time of the trial, and as to her probable condition at the time of the shooting, where the defendant’s counsel was endeavoring to show that she was, at the time she shot Miss Thurmond, in such a state as to be insane or suffering from what is known as “delusional” insanity—the solicitor stated “I submit that there is no such thing as ‘temporary’ insanity in Georgia,” and the trial judge, in the presence of the jury, stated: “I have never heard of it, but I am not an expert. Is there any definition of law as to temporary insanity?” At this point the defendant’s counsel asked that the jury retire, and moved for a mistrial, which the court denied.

The trial judge made no statement that there was not in this State such a thing as “temporary” insanity, but simply stated that he was not an expert and had never heard of it. Our law deals with delusional insanity as a defense and as the only exception to insanity generally, but it is not referred to as “temporary” insanity.

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Related

Drewry v. State
66 S.E.2d 806 (Court of Appeals of Georgia, 1951)
Drewry v. State
65 S.E.2d 916 (Supreme Court of Georgia, 1951)

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Bluebook (online)
63 S.E.2d 429, 83 Ga. App. 354, 1951 Ga. App. LEXIS 867, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/drewry-v-state-gactapp-1951.