Court Opinion

ID: 9674217
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-24 04:24:56.835921+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:16:26.170653
License: Public Domain

ODOM, Judge
(dissenting).
I cannot agree to the affirmance of this case. I respectfully dissent.
The majority has concluded that, as a matter of law, there are no facts in evidence which would authorize a jury to find that the mind of appellant was incapable of cool reflection when he shot the deceased. The statute (Art. 1257c, V.A.P.C.) only requires facts, sufficient to present the issue, that the killing occurred under the immediate influence of a sudden passion arising from an adequate cause.
The adequate cause in the statute is “such cause as would commonly produce a degree of anger, rage, resentment, or terror 1 in a person of ordinary temper sufficient to render the mind incapable of cool reflection.”
The record is replete with testimony that supplies adequate cause to submit the charge on murder without malice. The jury, as the fact finders, could then “remove all doubt as to the question.”
I would reverse and remand.
ONION, P. J., joins in this dissent.

. Anger is the general term for the emotional reaction of extreme displeasure and suggests neither a definite degree of intensity, nor an outward manifestation; rage implies loss of self-control from violence of emotion; resentment is a feeling of indignant displeasure at something regarded as a wrong, insult, or injury; and terror is a state of intensive fear. See Webster’s Dictionary.