Court Opinion

ID: 9610648
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-22 03:44:39.792188+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:03:02.802388
License: Public Domain

On Motion for Rehearing.
Defendant originally contended that the charge dealt with in Division 3 of the opinion was not adjusted to the evidence — she now seeks to "mend her hold” on motion for rehearing by contending that the charge was abstractly incorrect. In her brief, defendant undertook to support enumeration of error 10 by arguing that the charge was erroneous because the evidence was insufficient to authorize a finding that a common law *56marriage existed. The argument was supported, as required by our Rule 18 (c) (2), by reference to portions of the record concerning the marital relationship and by citation of authority dealing with the requisites of a common law marriage. After we have met the issue presented by searching the transcript for evidence of a common law marriage and have determined the issue adversely to defendant, she now says to us, as did the lady to Mr. Prufrock: "That is not what I meant at all. That is not it, at all,”1 and contends (without citation of authority) that the charge was abstractly incorrect. We do not condone this practice and do not agree, as defendant asserts in her motion for rehearing, that failure to successfully support enumeration of error 10 is sufficient ground for a rehearing. Rules 18(c 2), 33(f), this court.
In any event defendant could not have been harmed by any limitation in the charge on the right to use force in defense of habitation. Criminal Code § 26-903 provides that "A person is justified in threatening or using force against another when and to the extent that he reasonably believes that such threat or force is necessary to prevent or terminate such other unlawful entry into or attack upon, a habitation...” (Emphasis supplied.) In this case the confrontation between the parties in defendant’s house had ceased, the decedent had gone outside, and defendant had also exited the house and was attempting to leave the same in her automobile when, according to her testimony, she "accidentally” shot the decedent with a shotgun. In these circumstances we fail to see how Code Ann. § 26-903 was even applicable, and defendant received a more favorable charge on that section than that to which she was entitled.

Motion for rehearing denied.

 Eliot, The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock, T. S. Eliot Collected Poems 16 (Harcourt, Brace & Co. 1936).