State v. Jacobs

Citations

• 28 S.C. 29
• 4 S.E. 799
• 1888 S.C. LEXIS 10

Syllabus

<p>1. The judge correctly charged that if defendant killed deceased in sudden heat and passion caused by a sufficient provocation, and not with premeditation or malice aforethought, the killing would be reduced to manslaughter, but that the law regarded no mere words, however insulting, as such sufficient provocation.</p> <p>2. If the judge charged that no mere words, however irritating, can reduce the killing lower than manslaughter, he committed error of law, but an error of which the defendant could not complain.</p> <p>3. The judge is not bound to instruct a jury in the precise terms in which a request is presented, oven though it may contain a correct proposition of law; and in this case he properly so framed the instruction requested as to make it applicable to the several views of the testimony that the jury might take.</p> <p>4. There is no error in refusing a charge when the instruction requested had been already given to the jury.</p> <p>5. One who kills another cannot set up in his own defence a necessity so to do, when he had brought such necessity upon himself.</p> <p>6. The admission of testimony in reply is within the discretion of the Circuit Judge. And where a part of a conversation was brought out by a witness for the defence, the judge properly permitted the whole conversation to be proved in reply.</p> <p>7. A witness for plaintiff was asked on cross-examination if she had made a certain statement to a third person, and she said she had not. Such person was produced by defendant and proved the statement. Held, that it would not have been proper for plaintiff’s witness when first on the stand to have been interrogated by plaintiff as to such conversation (not then in evidence), but that she was properly examined about it in the reply.</p>