## Facts

- J. V. Matthews fought with and severely beat D. Brazzil earlier in the day.
- Witnesses told Brazzil (defendant), D. Brazzil’s brother, about the beating.
- Later that day, Brazzil and Matthews encountered each other at a store.
- Brazzil confronted Matthews with insulting language about the earlier beating, and a confrontation began.
- Both men drew pistols; Brazzil struck Matthews over the head with his pistol.
- Matthews fired at Brazzil, and during the struggle Matthews dropped his gun.
- Matthews ran out of the store. Brazzil did not pursue, stating he did not want to shoot a man in the back.
- Brazzil, having been shot, remained at the store and began tending to his wound.
- Matthews went into another store across the street and asked for a pistol; the owner refused and suggested a doctor look at Matthews’s head wound.
- A doctor briefly examined Matthews. After a few minutes, Matthews stood up, said he was going to get his pistol, and ran back toward the store where Brazzil remained.
- Brazzil saw Matthews coming and told him to stop, but Matthews continued toward him.
- As Matthews reached the store entrance, Brazzil fired and missed.
- Matthews engaged Brazzil in another struggle; Brazzil broke free and shot Matthews, killing him.
- Only a few minutes passed from Matthews’s initial flight to his return to the store.
- Brazzil was convicted of murder and appealed, claiming the jury charge improperly treated the events as one encounter and wrongly limited his self-defense claim.

## Issues

1. Whether the trial court committed reversible error by instructing the jury in a manner that treated the sequence of events as one running difficulty rather than allowing the jury to view Matthews’s return as a separate encounter for self-defense purposes.
2. Whether, on this evidence, the trial court properly instructed the jury on the “provoking the difficulty” limitation on self-defense.

## Decision

- The appellate court affirmed the murder conviction.
- The court rejected Brazzil’s complaint that the jury charge improperly prevented consideration of self-defense based on an alleged “second” encounter.
- The court held the self-defense instructions, including the instruction on provoking the difficulty, were not reversible error when read as a whole and in light of the evidence.

## Legal Principles

- Self-defense may be limited where the defendant provokes or brings on the difficulty; in that situation, the defendant cannot rely on self-defense unless he abandons the conflict in good faith and makes that abandonment known.
- A trial court may submit a provocation (“provoking the difficulty”) instruction when the evidence permits a finding that the defendant initiated or sought the confrontation.
- Claimed errors in the jury charge are assessed in context; the reviewing court considers whether the charge, taken as a whole, fairly presented the governing law to the jury.
- When the record supports the trial court’s approach to charging the case, an appellate court will not reverse merely because the defendant offers a different way to frame the same sequence of events.

## Conclusion

The court left Brazzil’s murder conviction in place, concluding that the trial judge’s instructions on self-defense and provoking the difficulty—along with the way the charge treated the episode—did not amount to reversible error on this record, even though Brazzil argued Matthews’s return to the store created a new confrontation that restored his right to act in self-defense.


Brazzil v. State, 13 S.W. 1006 (1890)