Armstrong

On the evening of September 13, 1928, about 8 o’clock, at Kodiak, Alaska, the appellant shot and killed Eric Dahlberg as the latter was leaving the former’s home. At the trial, upon an indictment charging him with murder in the first degree, he admitted the killing, but claimed that it was done in self-defense. Upon a conviction of manslaughter he was sentenced to serve a term of fifteen years in the federal penitentiary.

He assigns three errors, all based upon the failure of the court to give certain requested instructions, one on the subject of reasonable doubt, one touching evidence of his reputation for peace and quiet, and the other in respect of a dying declaration. Of the first it will suffice to say that the instructions given were substantially correct and reasonably adequate, and, of the second, that the request was like that considered and disapproved by us in Baugh v. United States (C.C.A.) 27 F. (2d) 257.

Prior to the homicide there had been trouble between defendant and his wife and she had brought a suit for divorce, which was still pending. His testimony, however, was that two or three days previously a reconciliation had been effected and she had returned to…