State v. Miller
| Decision Date | 06 November 1879 |
| Citation | 47 Wis. 530,3 N.W. 31 |
| Parties | THE STATE OF WISCONSIN v. HENRY MILLER. |
| Court | Wisconsin Supreme Court |
OPINION TEXT STARTS HERE
Milwaukee municipal court.J. C. McKenney and Attorney General, for the state.
James Hickcox, for defendant.
It appears to us that the principle and correct rule by which the admissibility of the evidence received and involved in the two questions reported is to be determined, and the true grounds of their application to a given case, have been clearly established by previous decisions of this court, and it will therefore be profitless to review the great multiplicity of decisions of other courts which recognize the same rule, and differ only in its application.
The questions propounded by the learned judge who tried the case are–– First, did the court err in permitting the letter written by the defendant in the police station, after he was arrested, to be admitted in evidence and given to the jury? second, did the court err in admitting testimony to show that the defendant had been guilty of forgery and larceny?
As to the first question, it was in proof that the defendant was being examined and questioned generally by the police officers, concerning his participation in the crime charged, and a letter supposed to have been written by him, containing threats of arson, was orally and verbally repeated in his hearing, and he was requested to write and did write on another paper the same words, in the presence of such officers, and the original letter so repeated contained words of peculiar form, style and orthography, and the copy so made was in these respects a fac simile of the same; and such officers, as witnesses on the trial, produced such copy, while testifying to the admissions of the defendant in such examination, and it was received in evidence and submitted to the jury, for the purpose of comparison with the original letter, and determining thereby the authenticity of the same.
The act of so copying the original letter could not, by the most liberal construction of language, be considered and treated as any part of the oral and verbal statement or admission of the defendant, elicited upon such examination. It was an independent act and fact, which had nothing to do with this oral statement or admission, which, to be evidence, must have been voluntary, and made understandingly, and repeated in the same language, if possible. But if language could be so liberally construed for the state, and so illiberally construed for the defendant, as to make such act of copying a part of the oral statement by being connected with it, even then it would not be the province or right of the prosecution to prove it on the ground that the whole of such statement must be given if any of it; but the defendant alone had the right to demand such testimony, if he chose to exercise it, on such ground. 1 Greenl. Ev. §§ 201, 202.
If such an act of copying a letter, at the dictation or request of a witness, can be treated and admitted in evidence as a part of his oral confessions, then such an act would be admissible if it constituted the whole of such confession, and a fact might thus be proved as a confession or admission which could not be proved in any other way, and any other proof of which would be incompetent. It will not be contended that it would be proper to prove that the defendant actually wrote the copy for the purpose of introducing it in evidence to convince the jury by comparison that he also wrote the original, unless such copy is already in...
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