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126 Ala. 59

Gibson v. State

Supreme Court of Alabama

Decided November 15, 1899

Supreme Court of Alabama · decided 1899-11-15

Appkal from County Court of Cleburne. Tried before tlie 1-Ion. T. J. Burton. Tlie appellant, Bud Gibson, was tried under an indictment charging him with manslaughter for the killing of one Monroe Simmons, was convicted of manslaughter in the second degree and sentenced to hard labor for the county.

Relies on Watkins v. State · McQueen v. State · McQueen v. State

Good law ✅— No negative treatment on recordhow we know

Decided 1899-11-15

How this case has been cited

Cited by 6 later decisions — most recently October 1963

6 state decisions

3018991900191019201930194019501960decided

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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DOWDELL, J.

¶1On the testimony of the “witnesses Ivey and Ohandlex’, the statements made by the deceased to these “witnesses in regard to the shooting from which his death resulted, were admissible in evidence as dying declarations.—McQueen v. State, 103 Ala. 12; McQueen v. State, 94 Ala. 50; Jordan v. State, 82 Ala. 1,

¶2*63Charge No. 3 refused to the defendant, if it were faulty in no other respect, is bad in that it pretermits the doctrine of freedom from fault. As was forcibly said by this court in the case of Watkins v. State, 89 Ala. 88, 89, a man’s house is “his castle for purposes of defense. It cannot be turned into an arsenal for the purpose of offensive efforts against the lives of others. He cannot justify under a necessity which his own fault or wrong has contributed to produce.” There was evidence tending to show that the defendant was not free from fault and wrong which contributed to produce the necessity for him to shoot, if it can be said that such necessity existed.

¶3The court very properly refused charge No. 13 requested by the defendant. This charge instructs the jury upon the facts postulated to find that the defendant was free from fault. The jury might find every fact hypothesized in the charge to be true, and yet find from other facts in evidence that the defendant was not free from fault in bringing on the difficulty. The charge withdrew from the jury the consideration of all the other evidence and from which they might have inferred that the defendant was at fault.

¶4We find no error in the record, and the judgment of the court must be affirmed.

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