State v. Ayers
State v. Ayers
Opinion of the Court
The opinion of the Court was delivered by
The defendant, having been convicted of manslaughter on an indictment charging him with the murder of Malley Whitmore, appeals on the ground that there was error for which a new trial should be granted in the following instruction to the jury: “If the clot on the brain caused the death of the deceased, and you can trace that back to the blow, the defendant would be held responsible under this theory of the law, under the theory that the law holds a man responsible for an unlawful act intention *427 ally done. Just as you would say of a soldier on a battle field who was shot in the leg and gangrene would set in or pneumonia would set in from the wound and he would die, you would say that he was killed from a gunshot wound in battle; even though he died of pneumonia, the gunshot wound would be the cause of his death. If one strikes another a blow and so disarranges the anatomy that death results from complications that set in, within a year and a day after the blow was inflicted, you charge the death to the blow as the proximate cause.”
It is the judgment of this Court that the judgment of the Circuit Court be affirmed.
Reference
- Full Case Name
- State v. Ayers.
- Cited By
- 1 case
- Status
- Published
- Syllabus
- 1. Charge. — Where a defendant admits that he struck deceased with a stick, the statement by the Judge in his charge, “If the clot on the brain caused the death and you can trace that back to the blow,” could not have affected the result. 2. Ibid.- — The assumption that there was a clot on the brain was technical error, but as the only evidence about the clot was that of the physician, which was in no way contradicted, this allusion could not have affected the verdict.