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12 Ala. App. 61

Donald v. State

Alabama Court of Appeals

Decided February 11, 1915

Alabama Court of Appeals · decided 1915-02-11

Murder. Appeal from Coffee Circuit Court. Heard before Hon. H. A. Peakce. Joe Donald was convicted of murder in the second degree, and be appeals. Defendant was charged with killing John Jones by shooting him with a pistol. Defendant introduced one Gf. H. McRitchie and asked him if the defendant ever came up there to take out peace proceedings against Jones after that. Objection was sustained on motion of solicitor.

Relies on Dupree v. State · Pate v. State · Franklin v. State

Good law ✅— No negative treatment on recordhow we know

Affirmed · Decided 1915-02-11

How this case has been cited

Cited by 3 later decisions — most recently August 1979

3 state decisions

101915192019301940195019601970decided

Later decisions citing this case, by decade. The current decade is in progress, and our corpus holds fewer opinions from the most recent years, so the latest bars are undercounted — not a real decline.

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PELHAM, P. J.

¶1Evidence of the “peace proceedings” and contents of the affidavit sworn out by the defendant against the deceased some weeks prior to the killing, before a person referred to as a “Mr. McRitchie,” Avas not admissible, and the court committed no error in sustaining the solicitor’s objections to- questions calling for this testimony. Such evidence was not material to the issues before the court, except as proof of self-serving conduct that it was not permissible to show.

¶2*63The court properly refused to let the defendant prove particular acts of violence of the deceased entirely disconnected with the killing in question, for the purpose of showing the turbulent or bloodthirsty character of the deceased. It is only the general bad character of the deceased as a turbulent, bloodthirsty, revengeful, or dangerous man that is competent proof and proper evidence to explain, illustrate, or give meaning and point to the conduct of the deceased relative to the issue on the defendant’s plea of self-defense.-Dupree v. State, 33 Ala. 380, 73 Am. Dec. 422; Franklin v. State, 29 Ala. 14.

¶3It requires no discussion to show the correctness of the court’s ruling in sustaining the solicitor’s objection to the question asked the defendant, when being examined as a witness in his own behalf, “And if you hadn’t dodged, he [deceased] would have cut you?”

¶4The court could not be put in error for refusing charge 1, for the reason that it invades the province of the jury and singles out for consideration a question of character, pretermitting a consideration of all the other evidence.Pate v. State, 150 Ala. 10, 43 South. 343.

¶5Charge No. 2 is rendered meaningless ajad unintelligible by the use of the word “by,” as that word last appears in the charge as set out, and the court might well have refused it on this account (Steele v. State, 159 Ala. 9, 48 South. 673), although the charge is otherwise faulty.

¶6No duty rested on the court to give charge 3. It is argumentative, and invades the province of the jury.—Medley v. State, 156 Ala. 78, 47 South. 218.

¶7An examination of the transcript discloses no error requiring a reversal, and an affirmance.is ordered.

¶8Affirmed.

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