State v. Murrell

Citations

• 33 S.C. 83
• 11 S.E. 682
• 1890 S.C. LEXIS 115

Syllabus

<p>1. This court will not hear an appeal by one convicted of murder who has escaped from custody and is still at large. His appeal was suspended, no motion to dismiss having been made.</p> <p>2. There is no error in refusing to charge correct propositions of law in the language adopted by counsel in their requests, where the same principles have alrqpdy been presented to the jury in the general charge.</p> <p>3. Error cannot be imputed to an isolated extract from the charge, when the connection in which it was used, gives to it a meaning that is free from error.</p> <p>4. Where one of two defendants claims that he had nothing whatever to do with the homicide or the antecedent difficulty, there was neither error nor impropriety in the judge stating to the jury the undisputed fact that such defendant “does not set up that he was ever assaulted by the deceased, and no other witness testifies that he was assaulted by the deceased.”</p> <p>5. A request to charge that one assaulted with a deadly weapon was not required by the law to flee, but might repel force with force, and, if necessary to save himself from death or serious bodily harm, kill his assailant, ignores the necessary element that the party so assaulted must have been himself free from blame in bringing on the difficulty; and therefore the judge did not err in adding to this request that “the elements of self-defence must concur to entitle defendant to the benefit of that law.”</p> <p>6. There is no error in refusing to charge a request based upon a state of facts which has no application to the only defences interposed.</p> <p>7. In response to an inquiry from the foreman of the jury, in a murder case, the judge informed the jury that “the law provides that in certain cases the j ury are allowed to supplement the verdict with a recommendation to mercy, and that of itself changes the verdict. In cases like this a recommendation to mercy would have its influence with the court. It would not be binding upon the