Crawford v. State

Appellant was convicted upon a charge of murder in the first degree and sentenced to death for the killing of his mother-in-law, Mrs. Minnie May Chitty, on December 20, 1927. According to the evidence for the State, the killing was wholly unwarranted and unprovoked. The defendant contended that he shot the deceased after a murderous assault made upon him by the deceased with a stick of stovewood, without provocation, and after she had knocked him down and was attempting further to strike him.

His first assignment of error is that the court committed reversible error in its refusal to give his…