People v. Bruggy

PER CURIAM. The defendant was convicted of murder in the first degree, and is under sentence of death. He appeals from the judgment rendered against him, and from an order refusing a new trial. Pie makes the point that the evidence is insufficient to sustain the verdict. The jury had before them persons who witnessed the homicide, and all its attendant circumstances. There was certainly some evidence which tended to show the guilt of the defendant as charged; and that being so, we are not warranted in saying that the [407]jury gave it improper weight, and should not have returned the verdict which they did.

It is further claimed that the instruction of the court was erroneous, which was in this language: “If the jury believe from the evidence in this case that the defendant, Bruggy, killed the deceased by shooting him, and that the shooting was done by Bruggy in resenting an attack on the part of the deceased to murder him, Bruggy, or an attempt on the part of the deceased to do great bodily harm to him, Bruggy, then in such case I instruct you the killing by Bruggy was justifiable, and you should find the defendant not guilty. The rule in such a case is this: What would a reasonable person— a person with ordinary caution, judgment, and observation— in the position of the defendant, seeing what he saw, and knowing what he knew, suppose from his situation and his surroundings? If such reasonable person, so placed, would have been justified in believing himself in imminent danger, then the defendant would be justified in believing himself in such peril, and in acting on such appearances;” The defendant contends that this instruction should not have confined his right to kill the deceased to a state of facts where the deceased was endeavoring to murder Bruggy, or to do him some great bodily harm, but that it should have stated further that an attempt to kill Bruggy by the deceased, either with or without malice aforethought, would have warranted the defendant in taking the life of the deceased, and that the word “murder” was misleading in the connection in which it was used. It must be borne in mind that this instruction was to the effect that, if the whole evidence showed a certain condition of affairs, the defendant was to be acquitted. If it had stated that Bruggy was not to be acquitted unless murder or some great bodily harm was then about to be accomplished by the deceased, then it is plain that the instruction would be misleading. But it is not manifest that as reasonable men the jury could have understood the instruction to mean what the defendant claims. Such a construction by them would not be harmonious in any degree with the language used by the court, and, although to be strictly accurate, the words suggested, or some others appropriate to convey the idea, would have made the instruction clearer, the omission to do so did not, in our opinion, have or tend to have