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124 Ala. 41

Welch v. State

Supreme Court of Alabama

Decided November 15, 1899

Supreme Court of Alabama · decided 1899-11-15

Tried before Hon. J. C. Richardson. Steve Welch and Maston Welch were jointly tried for assault with intent to murder. Maston Welch was acquitted. The' charges refused to the defendants are as MIoavs: “2. Before the jury can reach a conviction in this case for assault Avith intent to murder, they must believe from the evidence beyond a reasonable doubt and to a moral certianty that the defendants with malice aforethought and with premeditated design tried to kill Cox.

Cited by 4 later decisions — most recently August 1916

4 state decisions

Relies on Miller v. State · Rogers v. State · Meredith v. State

Good law ✅— No negative treatment on recordhow we know

Decided 1899-11-15

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McCLELLAN, C. J.

¶1— The request for the affirmative charge for the defendant in this case was a palpable trifling with the court, the evidence of two witnesses for the State going directly and positively to establish every essential element of a most vicious and blood-thirsty assault with intent to. murder.

¶2The second charge is confused and unintelligible in part, and in other part asserts the wholly untenable proposition that, to constitute an assault with intent to murder there must not only be malice, but also premeditated design. Meredith v. State, 60 Ala. 441.

¶3Before an acquittal can be had on the ground of self-defense, it must appear that the defendant was free from fault in bringing on the difficulty, not merely that he was reasonably free from fault as is hypothesized in the third charge refused to the defendant. Dennis v. State, 118 Ala. 72. This charge may be open also to other objections.

¶4The fourth charge refused to the defendant is bad for pretermitting the imminency of defendant’s peril and the absence of opportunity to retreat, and postulating instead thereof that he “struck in self-defense.” Miller v. State, 107 Ala. 40; Rogers v. State, 117 Ala. 9.

¶5Charge 5 refused to the defendant is-as follows: “A conviction 'should not be had upon circumstantial evidence, if positive evidence is attainable, or before the *44jury.” This is not the law; and. if it were, the charge has no place in a case like this, where the whole evidence is from the mouths of eye-witnesses to the occurrence and goes not circumstantially or inferentially but directly and positively to the details of the difficulty.

¶6Affirmed.

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