Opinion ID: 1766123
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: instruction refusal

Text: Nicolaou next complains the circuit court erred in refusing Instruction D-4: INSTRUCTION D-4 The Court instructs the Jury that malice aforethought is a necessary element of the crime of murder. However, even if actual malice existed at the time of the slaying, it is not always murder. A person may be guilty of only manslaughter even when bearing ill will toward his adversary at the time of the killing, if the act is done while resisting an attempt of the latter to do any unlawful act, or after such attempt shall have failed if such anger or ill will is engendered by the particular circumstance of the unlawful act then being attempted or the commission of which is then thwarted, and is nonexistent prior thereto. Nicolaou argues that he was prejudiced by the court's refusal to grant this instruction because the court had granted the State's Instruction S-2: INSTRUCTION S-2 The Court instructs the Jury that malice aforethought as charged in the Indictment in this cause and referred to in other instructions of the Court is a state of mind and does not have to exist in the mind of the slayer for any given length of time, and if the Defendant at the very moment of the fatal blow did so with the deliberate design to take the life of the deceased and not in necessary self-defense, real or apparent, then it was malice aforethought, and that was truly murder, as if the deliberate design had existed in the mind of the Defendant for minutes, hours, days or weeks, or even years. The Court did not err in refusing to grant D-4; first because there was no evidence in the record warranting a manslaughter instruction, as we have noted; and second, because it did not correctly state the law. This Court has criticized the granting of instructions such as S-2, see: Windham v. State, 520 So.2d 123 (Miss. 1987), and cases cited. There was no prejudicial error in the granting of this instruction in this case, however, because the evidence is clear that Poole was not killed instantaneously by some deadly weapon, but only after a brutal beating which took time and deliberation. The circuit judge gave instructions on manslaughter which were not required under the evidence in this case. Instructions C. 17, p. 831; D-1, p. 835.