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29 Mo. 419

State v. Stewart

Supreme Court of Missouri

Decided January 15, 1860

Supreme Court of Missouri · decided 1860-01-15

This was an indictment for a felonious assault with intent to kill. The defendant moved the court to quash the indictment because it was not alleged that the offence was committed on purpose and of malice aforethought. The motion was overruled.

Good law ✅— No negative treatment on recordhow we know

Decided 1860-01-15

How this case has been cited

Cited by 10 later decisions — most recently March 1936

10 state decisions

3018601870188018901900191019201930decided

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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Napton, Judge,

¶1delivered the opinion of the court.

¶2The indictment in this case is deemed sufficient under the thirty-eighth section of chapter fifty of the act concerning crimes and punishments.

¶3We are not satisfied, however, that the instructions presented the law in such a shape to the jury as to enable them to understand their duty. None of the instructions, which are given, made any exceptions in favor of justifiable assaults; and this omission may have been right enough and produced no harm, if, in truth, there was no evidence in the case which rendered it necessary to present such a hypothesis to the jury.

¶4*421But the instruction in reference to the intent of the defendant was calculated to mislead. The intent of the defendant in making the assault was a question of fact for the jury. The law raises no presumption about it, and it was error for the court to tell the jury that “ the law presumes that every man intends the natural, necessary, and probable consequence of his acts.”

¶5With the concurrence. of the other judges, the judgment is reversed, and cause remanded.

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