Bird v. State

1. The unlawful killing of one who has given the slayer no provocation other than the use of words, threats, menaces, or contemptuous gestures can not, in this State, be graded to voluntary manslaughter, under the doctrine of mutual combat. Penal Code, §65. See also Cumming v. State, 99 Ga. 662. Under the principle just announced, there was no evidence in this case authorizing an instruction on the law of voluntary manslaughter, under the doctrine of mutual combat. The case of Jenkins v. State, 123 Ga. 523, dealt with the subject of “other equivalent circumstances,” and not “mutual combat.”…