## Facts

- Jared Jerome Weems won about $160 at a gambling house near the East North Cafe in Dothan, Alabama.
- Outside, an unknown man slapped Weems and attempted to cut him with a knife; Weems fled and later believed he lost his mother’s car keys during the incident.
- Weems returned to look for the keys and entered the East North Cafe to ask if anyone had found them.
- Fearing another encounter with the attacker, Weems took a gun kept in the car’s glove box into the cafe; the gun was loaded and cocked.
- Weems saw his friend Christine Wilson (“Mama Chris”) and walked to her table while still holding the pistol.
- Weems testified that while putting the pistol away, it discharged and struck Wilson; she later died.
- Multiple patrons’ accounts were substantially consistent with Weems’s version; no witness saw Weems deliberately fire.
- After the shot, Wilson said, “Mister, you done shot me,” and Weems immediately offered to take her to the hospital.
- The prosecution did not dispute that the shooting was accidental.
- Weems was convicted of murder in the Circuit Court of Houston County; the Court of Criminal Appeals affirmed, and the Alabama Supreme Court granted certiorari.

## Issues

1. Whether evidence of an undisputed accidental shooting, caused by bringing a loaded, cocked gun into a cafe, was sufficient to sustain a murder conviction under Alabama law.
2. Whether the facts instead supported only a lesser grade of criminal homicide based on recklessness or negligence rather than the mental state required for murder.

## Decision

- The Alabama Supreme Court reversed the Court of Criminal Appeals’ affirmance of the murder conviction.
- The Court held that, given the State’s uncontested position that the discharge was accidental and the corroborating witness testimony, the evidence did not support murder.
- The Court set aside the murder conviction and remanded for proceedings consistent with treating the conduct as a lesser homicide offense.

## Legal Principles

- A murder conviction requires proof of the statutory mental state for murder; an accidental discharge, without evidence of intentional firing or equivalent malice, is insufficient.
- Dangerous handling of a loaded, cocked firearm in a public place may establish a substantial and unjustifiable risk supporting reckless or negligent homicide, but does not automatically establish murder.
- When witness accounts and post-shooting conduct support an accidental shooting, the degree of homicide must correspond to the proven culpability level rather than the fact of death alone.

## Conclusion

The Alabama Supreme Court reversed Weems’s murder conviction because the undisputedly accidental discharge and corroborating circumstances did not establish the mental state required for murder, though the conduct could support a lesser homicide offense based on recklessness or negligence.


Ex parte Weems, 463 So. 2d 170 (Ala. 1984)