I. Intoxication

• Library: The Criminal Law of South Carolina (SCBar) (2014 Ed.)

I. Intoxication

1. Voluntary Intoxication

The most concise statement of the law in this area is simply that voluntary intoxication is no defense to a criminal charge in South Carolina. This was true in the nineteenth century: "voluntary drunkenness of whatever degree is no excuse for crime committed under its influence," State v. Bundy, 24 S.C. 439, 444 (1886), and it is true today: "voluntary intoxication, where it has not produced permanent insanity, is never an excuse for or a defense to crime, regardless of whether the intent involved be general or specific." State v. Vaughn, 268 S.C. 119, 125, 232 S.E.2d 328, 330 (1977). There are, of course, sound policy reasons for the basic proposition that voluntary intoxication should not excuse criminal conduct. The contrary position would make it far too easy to avoid accountability for one's acts, thereby perhaps undermining the deterrent and retributive functions of the criminal justice system. Additionally, the recognition of such a defense might pose substantially difficult issues of proof as to the degree of the defendant's intoxication.

Nonetheless, the majority of jurisdictions have taken a less absolutist stance than has South Carolina. While agreeing that voluntary intoxication would never be a defense to a crime involving only a general criminal intent or mens rea, other jurisdictions recognize that it can preclude conviction of a crime involving some more specific criminal intent if the finder of fact concludes that the defendant was so intoxicated that he could not have entertained the requisite intent. For example, in Brennan v. People, 86 P. 79 (Colo. 1906), the Supreme Court of Colorado reversed a conviction for first degree murder in which the trial court had refused to give the following instruction:

The court instructs the jury that, while it is a general rule of law that voluntary drunkenness is no excuse for a crime perpetrated under its influence, still in cases of this kind intoxication, if proved, may sometimes be considered by the jury, for the purpose of determining whether the accused at the time of the alleged offense was capable of forming a willful, deliberate, and premeditated design to take life; and in this case, although the jury may believe from the evidence beyond a reasonable doubt that the defendant killed the deceased, still, if you further believe from the evidence that before and at the time the defendant fired the shot he was so under the influence of intoxicating drink as to

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