McDaniel v. State

85 S.E.2d 490, 91 Ga. App. 196, 1954 Ga. App. LEXIS 895
CourtCourt of Appeals of Georgia
DecidedSeptember 27, 1954
Docket35134
StatusPublished
Cited by1 cases

This text of 85 S.E.2d 490 (McDaniel 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
McDaniel v. State, 85 S.E.2d 490, 91 Ga. App. 196, 1954 Ga. App. LEXIS 895 (Ga. Ct. App. 1954).

Opinion

Gardner, P. J.

1. There is no exception to the charge of the trial court. The judge charged correctly, fully, and clearly the law with reference to murder, justifiable homicide, the principle of law involving reasonable fears, apparent necessity _ for the taking of human life, and also voluntary manslaughter in compliance with the decision of the Supreme Court, as well as the law with reference to verdicts of guilty or not guilty on all phases of the case, charging in part as follows: “Manslaughter is the unlawful killing of a human creature without malice, either express or implied, and without any mixture of deliberation whatever, which may be voluntary upon a sudden heat of passion, or involuntary, in the commission of an unlawful act, or a lawful act without due caution and circumspection.

“In all cases of voluntary manslaughter, there must be some actual assault upon the person killing, or an attempt by the person killed, to commit a serious personal injury on the person killing, or other equivalent circumstances to justify the excitement of passion, and to exclude all idea of deliberation or malice, either express or implied. Provocation by words, threats, menaces or contemptuous gestures shall in no case be sufficient to free the person killing from the guilt and crime of murder. The killing must be the result of that sudden, violent impulse of passion supposed to be irresistible, for if there should have been an interval between the assault or provocation given and the homicide, of which the jury in all cases shall be the judges, sufficient for the voice of reason and humanity to be heard, the killing shall be attributed to deliberate revenge and be punished as murder. Serious personal injury as used in this section means injury greater than a provocation by mere words, and less than a felony.

“Justifiable homicide is the killing of a human being by commandment of the law, in the execution of public justice, by permission of the law in the advancement of public justice, in self-defense, or in defense of habitation, property or person [199]*199against one who manifestly intends or endeavors by violence or surprise, to commit a felony on either, or against any person who manifestly intends and endeavors in a riotous or tumultous manner to enter the habitation of anyone for the purpose of assaulting or offering personal violence to any person dwelling or being therein.

“By a felony is meant an offense for which the offender on conviction would be liable to punishment by death or imprisonment for the offense, in the penitentiary. All other offenses against the penal law of this State are classed as misdemeanors.

“I charge you further, that a bare fear of any of those offenses, to prevent which the homicide is alleged to have been committed, shall not be sufficient to justify the killing. It must appear that the circumstances were sufficient to excite the fears of a reasonable man that his life was in danger or some serious personal violent injury inflicted upon him, and acting in good faith, he shot the person named in the indictment. Shooting in a spirit of anger or revenge would amount to murder.

“The punishment for voluntary manslaughter is not less than one year nor more than twenty years imprisonment in the penitentiary. Should you convict the defendant of that offense, voluntary manslaughter, then it would become your duty to prescribe his punishment, and in prescribing his punishment, you would fix a minimum and a maximum penalty as prescribed by law. And in fixing such punishment you could take any intermediate period or periods falling within the minimum and maximum periods of punishment, as prescribed by law.

“The distinguishing features existing between these two grades of homicide, murder and voluntary manslaughter, is simply this: Murder means killing in malice, while voluntary manslaughter means killing in passion, done under that sudden, violent impulse of passion supposed to be irresistible, and done with such suddenness that the voice of reason and humanity had not had time to be heard.

“I charge you further gentlemen, where a defendant has been placed on trial, charged with a crime, that he is entitled to the benefit of every reasonable doubt as to each and every phase of his case, and such doubt extends not only to his guilt of the crime charged and alleged in the bill of indictment, but whether he be [200]*200guilty of a lower grade involved thereunder. If the jury should believe the defendant guilty of some grade, some offense, but are doubtful as to whether it be the higher grade, the grade for which he has been indicted, or the lower grade that is involved thereunder, then it becomes the jury’s duty to resolve that doubt in the defendant’s favor and convict the defendant of the lower grade. On the contrary, if the jury do not believe the defendant guilty of any offense, or have any reasonable doubt about that, it then becomes the jury’s duty to resolve that doubt in the defendant’s favor and convict the defendant of the lower grade. On the contrary, if the jury do not believe the defendant guilty of any offense, or have any reasonable doubt about that, it then becomes the jury’s duty to resolve that doubt in the defendant’s favor and acquit the defendant.

“If you believe from the evidence and the statement of the defendant that in killing the deceased the defendant acted under the fears of a reasonable man that the deceased was about to commit a felony upon him, or take his life, then you should acquit the defendant. In this connection, I charge you, that it is not incumbent upon the defendant to show that the killing was actually necessary, but that it would be sufficient if you believed that the accused, as a reasonable man, at the time of the killing believed, and had good reason to believe, that the killing was necessary; and I further charge you, that if you have a reasonable doubt as to whether or not the defendant believed as a reasonable man that the killing was actually necessary, it would be your duty to ñnd the defendant not guilty.

“If you believe from the circumstances of the case, as the same have been presented to you by the evidence in the case, including the statement of the defendant, that the situation at the time of the homicide was such as to excite the fears of a reasonable man in the situation of the defendant, that a felony was about to be committed upon him, or that his life was in danger, and that the defendant acted under those fears, and not in a spirit of revenge, and took the life of the deceased, then you should acquit him; and you should do so, nothwithstanding you may believe the defendant was in no danger and that if he had not acted, the deceased would not have committed any felony upon him. It is not necessary that there should have been [201]*201any actual danger of a felony about to be committed on the defendant, provided the defendant, acting under the fears of a reasonable man, believed in good faith that he was in such danger.

“It is not essential, in order for such killing to be justifiable, that an actual assault should have been made upon the person of the slayer, or that a blow should be actually given or struck. Nor is it essential, for such killing to be justifiable, that the assailant be within striking distance or reach of the slayer, if the attack be apparently imminent.

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Related

Carter v. State
87 S.E.2d 655 (Court of Appeals of Georgia, 1955)

Cite This Page — Counsel Stack

Bluebook (online)
85 S.E.2d 490, 91 Ga. App. 196, 1954 Ga. App. LEXIS 895, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/mcdaniel-v-state-gactapp-1954.