Hickory v. United States

Citations

• 160 U.S. 408
• 16 S. Ct. 327
• 40 L. Ed. 474
• 1896 U.S. LEXIS 2112

Syllabus

<p>An assignment of error which indicates the subject-matter in the charge to which the exceptions relate with sufficient clearness to enable the court, from a mere inspection of the charge, to ascertain the particular matter referred to, is sufficient.</p> <p>Acts of concealment by an accused are competent to go to the jury as tending to establish guilt, but they are not to be considered as alone conclusive, or as creating a legal presumption of guilt, but only as circumstances to be considered and weighed in connection with other proof with the same caution and circumspection which their inconclusiveness, when standing alone, requires.</p> <p>The presumption of guilt arising from the flight of the accused is a presumption of fact — not of law — and is merely a circumstance tending to increase the probability of the defendant’s being the guilty person, which is to be weighed by the jury like-any other evidentiary circumstance.</p> <p>A statement in a charge to the jury that no one who was conscious of innocence would resort to concealment is substantially an instruction that all men who do so are necessarily guilty, and magnifies and distorts the power of the facts on the subject of the concealment.</p> <p>The court below charged the jury as to the probative weight which should be attached to the flight of the accused, as follows : “ And not only this, but the law recognizes another proposition as true, and it is that ‘the wicked flee when no man pursueth, but the innocent are as bold as a lion.’ That is a self evident proposition that has been recognized so often by mankind that we can take it as an axiom and apply it to this case.” Reld, that this was tantamount to saying to the .jury that flight created a legal presumption of guilt, so strong and so conclusive, that it was the duty of the jury to act on it as axiomatic truth, and as such that it was error.</p> <p>On these points the charge of the court was neither calm, nor impartial, but put every deduction whi