Case Title: Nixon v. State

Citation: 105 So. 2d 349

Docket Number: 

State: alabama

Court: Alabama Supreme Court

Date: 1958-09-11T00:00:00Z

Document:
105 So. 2d 349 (1958)
Sip NIXON
v.
The STATE of Alabama.
7 Div. 387.

Supreme Court of Alabama.
September 11, 1958.
Morel Montgomery, Birmingham, and Wales W. Wallace, Columbiana, for appellant.
John Patterson, Atty. Gen., and Geo. D. Mentz, Asst. Atty. Gen., for the State.
COLEMAN, Justice.
Appellant, defendant below, was indicted for and convicted of murder in the second degree for homicide caused by an automobile operated by defendant on a public high-way *350 in Shelby County. He was sentenced to twenty-five years imprisonment in the penitentiary.
Three school children were killed. They had alighted from a school bus shortly before the accident. The bus was traveling in the direction opposite to the direction in which defendant was driving the automobile. The children, after getting out of the bus, had crossed the highway and were walking along the shoulder of the road on the right-hand side in the same direction as that in which defendant was driving the car at a speed estimated at 60 to 80 miles per hour.
There was another school bus in front of and traveling in the same direction as the one in which the children had been riding, that is, opposite to defendant's direction of travel. The evidence tended to show that defendant had come over a slight hill, and in meeting this other bus had veered to defendant's left side of the road and narrowly missed colliding with this other bus. Defendant's automobile traveled back across the highway and into a ditch on his right-hand side of the road approaching the children from their rear. Before striking them, the automobile struck a mail box, knocked it up into the air and then proceeded 50 to 60 feet, struck the children and knocked them up into the air and some distance from the point of impact. The automobile continued on in its same direction and turned over on the right side some 60 to 300 feet from the mail box.
There was testimony tending to show that after the accident, the hood of the car was open and that underneath the hood at the back part thereof in front of the dashboard or fireboard, there was human hair. Defendant argues that the presence of hair at that place shows the hood was open prior to striking the children.
There was evidence that defendant's breath smelled heavily of alcohol immediately after the accident, and that when defendant came back to the place of the accident a few minutes thereafter, defendant said in substance, "I got to leave here." The only evidence offered by defendant was such as to tend to show his good character.
Appellant argues that the trial court erred in overruling the demurrer to the indictment, on the several grounds to the effect that the indictment fails to charge any offense known to the law, fails to charge murder in the second degree, and there is a mis-joinder of offenses.
The indictment follows Title 15, § 259, Form 81, Code of 1940, for murder in the second degree. An indictment in substantially the same form was by this court held sufficient to charge second degree murder in Ward v. State, 96 Ala. 100, 11 So. 217.
Because all the homicides charged in the instant case are shown by Count I of the indictment, and also by the evidence, to have been the result of a single act done by the defendant, there is no misjoinder of offenses, or duplicity, in the indictment.
The trial court did not err in overruling the demurrer.
Appellant duly excepted to the following portion of the oral charge of the trial court:
In Harrington v. State, 83 Ala. 9, 16, 3 So. 425, 428, this court said:
The same or similar language is used to define manslaughter in the first degree in the following cases: Williams v. State, 83 Ala. 16, 3 So. 616; White v. State, 84 Ala. 421, 4 So. 598; Hornsby v. State, 94 Ala. 55, 10 So. 522; Reynolds v. State, 154 Ala. 14, 45 So. 894; Fowler v. State, 161 Ala. 1, 49 So. 788; Jones v. State, 13 Ala.App. 10, 68 So. 690; Reynolds v. State, 24 Ala.App. 249, 134 So. 815; Kitchens v. State, 31 Ala.App. 239, 14 So. 2d 739; Jones v. State, 33 Ala.App. 451, 34 So. 2d 483; Gills v. State, 35 Ala.App. 119, 45 So. 2d 44; Clayton v. State, 36 Ala.App. 175, 54 So. 2d 719; Gurley v. State, 36 Ala.App. 606, 61 So. 2d 137; Harris v. State, 36 Ala.App. 620, 61 So. 2d 769; Turner v. State, 38 Ala.App. 73, 77 So. 2d 503; Gilliam v. State, 38 Ala.App. 420, 89 So. 2d 584.
In the instant case, the first statement in the portion of the charge to which exception was taken, to wit:
is an incorrect statement of the law.
In Harold v. State, 12 Ala.App. 74, 67 So. 761, the trial court refused the following written charge requested by defendant:
The Court of Appeals said:
In Harrington v. State, supra, this court also said:
See also Bluitt v. State, 161 Ala. 14, 17, 49 So. 854; Jackson v. State, 74 Ala. 26, 31; Mitchell v. State, 60 Ala. 26, 32.
In considering defendant's exception to the oral charge, we are not unmindful of the rule that "* * * the portion of the charge here excepted to should be construed in connection with the whole charge of the court * * *." Ex parte Cowart, 201 Ala. 525, 526, 78 So. 879, 880; Ala. Digest, Criminal Law. In the instant case, the oral charge undertook to state to the jury several alternative definitions of murder in the second degree. The statement which we have been considering may fairly have been understood by the jury to be one of those alternatives. The statement is incorrect because it ignores malice as an essential ingredient of murder in the second degree, and is prejudicial to defendant because it instructs the jury that if defendant did that which in law is only manslaughter in the first degree he might be guilty of the higher offense of murder in the second degree.
The remainder of the excepted to portion of the oral charge states a second proposition which is also an incorrect definition of murder in the second degree although it is substantially identical with a statement in the opinion in Berness v. State, 38 Ala.App. 1, 83 So. 2d 607. As used in that opinion the statement did not undertake to state a correct charge on, or even a definition of, murder in the second degree. The statement was a premise to consideration of one of the questions in that case, which was whether or not a defendant could be convicted of murder in the second degree when another was driving the car with defendant's authorization and defendant was present in the car.
In construing what is now § 314, Title 14, Code 1940, this court per Stone, J., said:
The earliest case which we have found in this jurisdiction in which a conviction for murder in the second degree caused by an automobile was affirmed is Reed v. State, 25 Ala.App. 18, 142 So. 441, 442, certiorari denied 225 Ala. 219, 142 So. 442. The indictment was for murder in the first degree. As to the oral charge of the trial court in that case, the Court of Appeals said:
We have examined the original record in the Reed case and find that in pertinent part the trial court charged as follows:
While the charge in the Reed case does not comply strictly with the statutory definition in that the charge characterizes the act as having been done without intention to deprive "the deceased" of life, where the statute employs the term "any particular person," both charge and statute declare that the facts hypothesized constitute murder in the first, not in the second, degree. See, also, Johnson v. State, 203 Ala. 30, 33, 81 So. 820, where a written charge given at the request of the state was held to be a correct definition of the fourth class of murder in the first degree.
The oral charge in the instant case defines as second degree murder the same offense which § 314 of Title 14 declares to be first degree murder. While a defendant charged with first degree murder may be convicted of second degree murder, the definitions for both degrees cannot be the same. The second proposition stated in the excepted to portion of the oral charge is also an incorrect statement of the law.
In giving that portion of the oral charge to which exception was reserved, the trial court erred to a reversal.
We have carefully considered defendant's insistence that the trial court erred in refusing to grant a new trial on the ground that the verdict is not sustained by the great preponderance of the evidence and are of opinion that this insistance is not well taken. Cobb v. Malone, 92 Ala. 630, 9 So. 738.
The written charges requested by defendant which the trial court refused to give were refused without error.
For the error in the oral charge the judgment is reversed and the cause is remanded.
Reversed and remanded.
LAWSON, STAKELY and MERRILL, JJ., concur.