Court Opinion

ID: 9812589
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-31 22:42:28.128856+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T15:25:24.597711
License: Public Domain

Reams, J.
The charge of his Honor is given at length, and it may be liable to the criticism, that it deals too much in general principles without practical application to the case in hand. But after a careful consideration we are unable to see that it was calculated to mislead the jury; or to leave them without the necessary information as to the law applicable to the case. And that they were not misled, is evident from the fact, that they rendered the only verdict which could have been rendered upon the facts.
The main objection at this Bar, was that his Honor did not give the special instructions prayed for.
We think he did give them substantially.
It has been so often decided as to become familiar, that a. Judge is not obliged to charge in the very words of the prayer, even when the prayer is right. It is sufficient if he does so in substance. If it were not so, the zeal of the advocate, or the craft of the Attorney would often confound the jury. For example, the second prayer in this case is as follows:
“ 2d. That after words of anger and mutual assaults with “ rocks, the prisoner retreats and picked up the weapon in hie “ retreat, to use it in defending himself, and is afterwards “ assaulted with a deadly weapon by deceased, and killed the “ assailant in defence, it is justifiable.”
Probably the end aimed at by the prayer, was to have his *484Honor charge the jury, that it the prisoner quit the fight and retreated as far as he could, and was pressed by the deceased with a deadly weapon, and the prisoner killed in self defence, it was excusable homicide.
If this was the end, then his Honor had charged it in substance. But to have charged in the words of the prayer, would have been to assume facts, violate grammar, and pervert Hie usual and familiar definitions of crime. There is no error.