Opinion · Supreme Court of North Carolina

State v. . Landreth

4 N.C. 331

Type
Opinion
Court
Supreme Court of North Carolina
Jurisdiction
North Carolina
Date
1816-01-05
Topic
bankruptcy

We do not think that the facts found in this case bring the offense within the common-law notion of malicious mischief. That seems to be confined to those cases where the act is done in a spirit of wanton malignity, without provocation or excuse, and under circumstances which bespeak a mind prompt and disposed to the commission of mischief. It is essential, says Blackstone, to the commission of this offense, that it must be done of a spirit of wanton cruelty or black and diabolical revenge. 4 Bl., 244. The conduct of the defendant was certainly highly reprehensible and barbarous, yet it was prompted by the sudden resentment of an injury which is calculated, in no slight degree, to awaken passion; and there is a difference which every one must feel, between an act (332) committed under such circumstances and one where the party goes of his own land in pursuit of an animal which had done him no injury, for the sake of exercising cruelty or perpetrating wanton mischief. Judgment for the defendant.

Citator

UpLaw has not yet analyzed State v. . Landreth. The absence of a flag is not a finding that it is good law.

Cited by
2 opinions
STATEv. LANDRETH,4 N.C. 331(1816)
STATE v. LANDRETH. — 2 L. R., 446.
Supreme Court of North Carolina
(January Term, 1816.)
Malicious mischief is confined to those cases where the act is done in a spirit of wanton malignity, without provocation or excuse, and under circumstances which bespeak a mind prompt and disposed to the commission of mischief; and does not include cases where the act is prompted by the sudden resentment of an injury which is calculated in no slight degree to awaken passion. Hence, an indictment for this offense will not lie where the defendant took a mare from his cornfield, where she was damaging his growing corn, to a secret part of the county, where he inflicted the wound with a view of preventing a repetition of the injury.
THE defendant was indicted for malicious mischief in stabbing with a butcher's knife a mare, the property ofYoung;but from the circumstances disclosed in the evidence, HENDERSON, J., before whom the cause was tried, was inclined to doubt whether the facts proved constituted the crime. He therefore recommended the jury to find a special verdict; in which it is stated that the defendant took the mare from his cornfield, where she was damaging his growing corn, to a secret part of the county, where he inflicted the wound, with a view of preventing a repetition of the injury. The case was submitted.
TAYLOR, C. J.
We do not think that the facts found in this case bring the offense within the common-law notion of malicious mischief. That seems to be confined to those cases where the act is done in a spirit of wanton malignity, without provocation or excuse, and under circumstances which bespeak a mind prompt and disposed to the commission of mischief. It is essential, says Blackstone, to the commission of this offense, that it must be done of a spirit of wanton cruelty or black and diabolical revenge. 4 Bl., 244.

The conduct of the defendant was certainly highly reprehensible and barbarous, yet it was prompted by the sudden resentment of an injury which is calculated, in no slight degree, to awaken passion; and there is a difference which every one must feel, between an act (332) committed under such circumstances and one where the party goes of his own land in pursuit of an animal which had done him no injury, for the sake of exercising cruelty or perpetrating wanton mischief.

Judgment for the defendant.

NOTE. — SeeS. v. Simpson,9 N.C. 460.Cited: S. v. Robinson,20 N.C. 131;S. v. Helms,27 N.C. 365;S. v.Martin,141 N.C. 838,839.Page 257