State v. . Howard

Hoke, J. It was chiefly urged for error that the court did not sustain defendant’s demurrer to the State’s evidence, and that his Honor refused to charge, as requested, that in no aspect of the evidence could defendant be convicted; but the position, in our opinion, cannot be sustained. His Honor properly charged the jury that in order to constitute the crime, within the meaning of the law, the words used must amount to a charge of incontinency. S. v. Moody, 98 N. C., 671. And while our decisions hold that when the words used have a fixed and unambiguous meaning, they may not, as a rule, be given a criminal significance by means of parol testimony that the hearers understood the “speaker to mean differently from the common import of the words” (Pitts v. Pace, 52 N. C., 558); it is also well established that.“when the words spoken are ambiguous and fairly admit of a slanderous interpretation, it is then a question for the jury to determine on the sense in which the words were used and whether they amounted to the slanderous charge to the reasonable apprehension of the hearers.” Reeves v. Bowden, 97 N. C., 30; Lucas v. Nichols, 52 N. C., 32; Simmons v. Morse, 57 N. C., 5; McBrayer v. Hill, 26 N. C., 36; Emmerson v. Marvell, 55 Ind., 265; 25 Cyc., 542. A very satisfactory statement of the principle is given in this last citation, 25 Cyc., as follows: “It is the province of the court to determine what constitutes libel or slander abstractly. Hence, if the language is plain and unambiguous it is a question of law whether or not it is libelous or slanderous. But if the language is ambiguous and susceptible of two meanings, one defamatory and the other not, it is for the jury to decide in what sense it was used; however, it is for the court to determine whether or not the language on its face is capable of a double meaning, and should be submitted to the jury for construction. It is the duty of the court to say whether a publication is capable of the meaning ascribed *314 to it by tbe innuendo, but when the court is satisfied of that, it must be left to the jury to say whether the publication has the meaning so ascribed to it.” And the position may, at times, be extended to terms and nicknames having general or local significance and rendering them slanderous to those who hear and so understand them. Sasser v. Rouse, 35 N. C., 142. In the present case, while the terms used, “That he had quit his old girl, Bessie Marshburn; that Luther Mills was going with her now; that she was no lady; she was nothing but a crook, and he could prove it by his brother Enoch,” may not have, primarily, the criminal significance, they are ambiguous in meaning, sufficiently so to call for the application of the principle, and we are of opinion that his Honor made correct ruling in referring the question to the jury. The testimony of the other witnesses, J. D. Marshburn et al., was clearly competent in corroboration of the principal witness, Hancock, and in explanation of the sense in which the words were used by the defendant in that conversation. S. v. Mills, 116 N. C., 1051; Brittain v. Allen, 13 N. C., 120. We find no reversible error, and the judgment is affirmed. No error.