Opinion ID: 2016045
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: issues

Text: The evidence most favorable to the State indicates that on the day of the killing, the defendant, with other women companions, was drinking and visiting in the home of a friend. Among those present, was Mary Ricketts. Mary and the decedent, Raymond Moore, were not married but were living together. He came to the house and instructed Mary to go home with him. She proceeded to finish her drink, and he indicated his impatience with her. The defendant told Mary that she did not have to go home, and an argument followed between the decedent and the defendant, in the course of which she called him a son of a bitch. The deceased then hit the defendant and knocked her to the floor. She got up, went to the kitchen, took a butcher knife from a drawer and attacked him. One of the other women present who had followed her into the kitchen told her to put it down, but she charged the defendant with it. The deceased picked up the chair and kept it between himself and the defendant, and backed out the door to a porch. As he backed onto the porch, he fell to the ground and dropped the chair. The defendant jumped off the porch and onto the decedent. He was on his back on the ground with his knees drawn up, struggling to get the knife, and the defendant was straddled on top of him. She stabbed the deceased, as Mary watched. Mary implored her not to do it again, and she replied, I'll kill the son of a bitch. He hit me. When the sufficiency of the evidence is raised upon appeal, this Court will consider only that evidence which is favorable to sustain the judgment below, together with all reasonable inferences to be drawn therefrom. If the evidence is such that a reasonable trier of fact could find each element of the crime charged beyond a reasonable doubt, the verdict will not be disturbed. Baum v. State, (1976) Ind., 345 N.E.2d 831. It is not this Court's province to judge the relative weight of the evidence or the credibility of the witnesses. Rosell v. State, (1976) Ind., 352 N.E.2d 750. The defendant appears to be concerned primarily with the absence of evidence supportive of the existence of the malice requisite to a conviction for second degree murder, as she directs our attention to her testimony that she was in fear for her own safety because of the decedent's attack upon her. However, the jury was not bound to believe her testimony, and the circumstances, as related by other witnesses, were consistent with the existence of malice. Malice may be inferred from the circumstances in evidence and the use of a deadly weapon in a manner likely to result in death. Aubrey v. State, (1974) 261 Ind. 531, 307 N.E.2d 67, Blackburn v. State, (1973) 260 Ind. 5, 291 N.E.2d 686. This Court has, upon a few occasions, reversed judgments where the requisite malice could be inferred only from the use of a deadly weapon, without more, and other evidence was unrefuted and reasonably supported a finding that the use of the weapon was accidental or provoked by anger, fear or other unreasoning or overmastering state of mind. Under such circumstances, it cannot be said that the inference of malice is reasonable. Here, however, not only did other evidence support the inference of malice, but the only evidence that the use of the weapon was provoked by an unreasoning or overmastering state of mind was entirely subjective, i.e. a defendant's testimony as to her own state of mind. Under the circumstances of this case, it cannot be said that the inference of malice could not have been reasonably drawn.