## Facts

- John Gounagias and Dionisios Grounas (also known as Dan George) were Greek immigrant coworkers at a paper mill in Camas, Washington, and had previously lived in the same house.
- The defense offered proof that, on April 19, 1914, Grounas sexually assaulted Gounagias while Gounagias was incapacitated.
- The defense further offered that, when confronted the next day, Grounas was asked to keep the incident secret but instead circulated it among coworkers, leading to repeated ridicule of Gounagias for weeks.
- On May 6, 1914, after renewed taunts at a coffeehouse and a day of reported illness and headache, Gounagias went home, obtained a .32-caliber revolver he had ordered by mail, went to Grounas’s room, and shot him multiple times while he was in bed.
- Grounas died, and Gounagias was charged by information with first-degree murder.

## Issues

1. Whether the evidence required a jury instruction on manslaughter as a lesser included offense of murder under Washington’s 1909 homicide statute.
2. Whether the trial court erred by excluding or limiting evidence of the prior sexual assault and subsequent ridicule as mitigation relevant to premeditation and degree of homicide.
3. Whether the trial court erred by excluding expert psychiatric testimony that the killing resulted from an “involuntary impulse” triggered by renewed taunts.

## Decision

- The Washington Supreme Court (en banc) affirmed the judgment and sentence for first-degree murder.
- The court held a manslaughter instruction was not warranted because the defendant’s own account showed an intentional killing with a design to effect death, and the statutory manslaughter definitions did not fit those facts.
- The court upheld exclusion/limitation of the proffered provocation evidence as legally insufficient to show “sudden” heat of passion where the original provocative act occurred weeks before the killing.
- The court upheld exclusion of psychiatric “involuntary impulse” testimony, treating it as an impermissible partial-responsibility theory outside recognized insanity doctrines and the statutory degree framework.

## Legal Principles

- Under Washington’s 1909 code, manslaughter is not submitted to the jury where the defendant’s evidence shows an intentional killing with a design to effect death and the killing is not connected to withdrawal from a non-felony offense.
- Evidence tending to show absence of premeditation may be admissible to mitigate first-degree murder to second-degree murder, but only if it has a reasonable tendency to show sudden and uncontrollable anger and lack of deliberation.
- Provocation and cooling time are generally jury questions, but a court may decide them as matters of law when, even viewing the evidence most favorably to the defendant, reasonable jurors could not find legally adequate provocation or insufficient cooling time.
- Repeated reminders and ridicule tied to a single provocative act occurring weeks earlier do not, as a matter of law, establish sudden heat of passion sufficient to mitigate a later intentional killing.
- Expert testimony that a defendant acted from an “involuntary impulse,” short of legal insanity, may be excluded where the jurisdiction does not recognize diminished capacity or partial-responsibility mitigation for homicide.

## Conclusion

The court affirmed a first-degree murder conviction because the defendant’s deliberate decision to arm himself and kill foreclosed manslaughter under the governing statute, the weeks-long interval rendered the claimed provocation legally inadequate for mitigation based on sudden passion, and psychiatric “impulse” evidence was properly excluded absent a recognized insanity defense or diminished-capacity doctrine.


State v. Gounagias, 88 Wash. 304, 153 P. 9 (Wash. 1915)