State v. Rader

Citations

• 118 Wash. 198
• 203 P. 68
• 1922 Wash. LEXIS 629

Syllabus

<p>Homicide (110-112) — Trial—Instructions—Justification. In a prosecution for homicide, where the defense was that the act was justifiable, the omission by the court of the element of justification in its charge to the jury defining the degrees of murder was error, notwithstanding an attempt in later instructions to define justifiable homicide.</p> <p>Same (110, 111-1) — Justifiable Homicide — Instructions—Misleading Instructions. In a prosecution for homicide where there was no evidence that the deceased had endeavored to withdraw from the fight, nor that the killing was done through motives of anger or fear after a change of circumstances had freed the defendant from danger, an instruction that under such circumstances the killing was not justifiable was misleading and erroneous, as assuming facts not in the case.</p> <p>Same (14-18) — Justifiable Homicide — Self-Defense—Duty of Defendant. A person on his own premises may defend himself from an unprovoked assault with any means within his command even to taking the life of his assailant, if the assault is of such a nature as to cause him reasonably to believe that he is in danger of his life or of great bodily harm.</p> <p>Same (121) — Trial—Instructions—Grade or Degree of Offense —Necessity. In a prosecution for murder in the first degree, it is error to refuse a requested instruction in the language of Rem. Code, § 2308, that where an offense has been proved against a person and there exists a reasonable doubt as to which of two or more degrees he is guilty, he shall be convicted only of the lowest; and the same is not cured by a verdict of second degree murder, since manslaughter is a degree within the crime of murder.</p> <p>Criminal Law (306) — Trial—Abstract Instructions. An instruction in a criminal case upon confessions and admissions is erroneous, though correct as a proposition of law, where there is no evidence justifying such instruction.</p>