Court Opinion

ID: 5437623
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2022-01-08 17:56:45.052131+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T08:31:53.841070
License: Public Domain

Crockett, J.,
concurring:
The defense relied upon in this cause is, that at the moment when the fatal shot was fired the accused was laboring under a temporary insanity, proceeding from certain physical causes, aggravated by the extraordinary mental excitement occasioned by the circumstances which immediately preceded the killing. The proof of the defendant’s bad reputation for chastity was offered and submitted solely on the ground that it tended to rebut the inference that the alleged mental excitement of the defendant was occasioned by a sense of shame and mortification which she experienced on account of the damage which she supposed her reputation had suffered by reason of her connection with Crittenden. The proof was, therefore, admitted for the purpose of throwing some light on the question of her mental condition at the moment when the deed was committed. If the defendant had offered any proof whatever that, previous to her relation with Crittenden, her reputation for chastity was good, and that the damage to that reputation which ensued from her connection with Crittenden so preyed upon her mind, in her then state of physical debility, as to result in a state of temporary insanity, it would have been clearly competent for the prosecution to rebut this presumption by proof that she had no reputation to lose, and consequently that she could not have experienced any great mental excitement occasioned by the loss of a reputation which she did not possess. But the defendant offered no proof whatever as to her previous reputation; and even in her own account of the transaction, and of the state of her mind at the time, did not attribute *158her alleged temporary insanity to any mental excitement resulting from a supposed loss of her reputation. On the contrary, .she attributes it partly to her physical condition and partly to the excitement produced by a fear that she was about to lose or was in danger of losing the affections of Mr. Crittenden, to which, it appears, she claimed to have a better right than his lawful wife. In the absence of all proof on her part tending to show that her alleged mental aberration was in any degree produced by a sense of shame or mortification occasioned by any damage to her good name, it was not competent for the prosecution to prove that her reputation for chastity was bad. She had offered no proof tending to show that it was good, and she did not pretend, in her version of the transaction, that her alleged insanity resulted in any degree from the loss of a previously good reputation.
I am, therefore, of opinion that the proof offered by the prosecution on this point was improperly admitted, inasmuch as it did not tend to rebut any proof offered by the defense, nor to elucidate the causes to which she attributes her alleged insanity. I have deemed it proper to add my views on this branch of the case to those of Mr. Justice Wallace, not because I dissent from any proposition stated by him, but for the reason that it has been insisted with much earnestness by the counsel for the prosecution that the proof of reputation in this case does not fall within the general rule which allows the reputation of the accused to be assailed only in rebuttal of proof of a good reputation offered by the defendant.
I concur in the judgment and with Mr. Justice Wallace on the other questions discussed in his opinion.