Anderson v. State

• Decision Date: 01 October 1934
• Docket Number: 31410
• Citation: 171 Miss. 41,156 So. 645
• Court: Mississippi Supreme Court
• Parties: ANDERSON et al. v. STATE

156 So. 645

171 Miss. 41

ANDERSON et al. v. STATE

No. 31410

Supreme Court of Mississippi

October 1, 1934

Division A

1 HOMICIDE.

Where evidence warranted conclusion that accused and companion were acting together in commission of crime, that companion had actually shot store inmate while he was trying to prevent accused from shooting proprietor did not render accused less guilty of charge of assault and battery with intent to murder.

2 HOMICIDE.

In prosecution for assault with intent to murder inmate of store, admission of evidence of shooting of proprietors held not error, where all were shot down as quickly as pistols could be fired.

3. CRIMINAL LAW.

Proof of another offense is admissible where main transaction cannot be brought out without showing such other offenses.

4. CRIMINAL LAW.

Generally hearsay evidence is not admissible, but where party out of court accuses another of crime, or makes statements against him in hearing of third party, and accused remains silent or does not deny accusation or statements, hearsay evidence of third party as to statements out of court is competent on theory that silence or failure to deny is admission by accused.

5. CRIMINAL LAW.

Practice of undertaking to bolster up testimony of witness on stand and to strengthen his credibility by proof of his declarations to same effect as sworn to by him out of court is improper.

6. CRIMINAL LAW.

Objection to evidence may not be made upon one ground in lower court and be presented upon entirely different theory in Supreme Court.

7. CRIMINAL LAW.

Objection in trial court on ground of hearsay to proof of identification of accused made out of court was proper, where proof failed to show that failure of accused to deny charge constituted an admission.

8. CRIMINAL LAW.

Where state was proponent of evidence tending to prove identification of accused out of court, state had burden to show that such accusation made against accused was undenied by him at time.

9. CRIMINAL LAW.

Where witnesses had not been examined as to whether accused had remained silent or denied charge when identification had been made out of court, admission in evidence of statements of identification as an admission against interest by accused held reversible error.

HON. WM. A. ALCORN, Judge.

APPEAL from the circuit court of Coahoma county HON. WM. A. ALCORN, Judge.

Sam Anderson and another were convicted of assault and battery with attempt to kill and murder, and they appeal. Reversed and remanded.

Reversed and remanded.

Semmes Luckett and Pat D. Holcomb, both of Clarksdale, for appellants.

The court erred in admitting, over defendants' objections, testimony relating to the shooting of the two Chinese.

For an act to be admissible as a part of the res gestae it must spring out of the main fact, must tend to illustrate, elucidate, or characterize it, must so harmonize and be connected with it as obviously to constitute one transaction.

16 C. J. 573-574.

It is a principle of the common law that previous declarations of a witness in conformity with his testimony before the court cannot be given in evidence at all affirmatively; and while a witness may be impeached by showing that he has made declarations contradictory to his evidence before the court, yet evidence that he has on other occasions made statements similar to what he has testified in the cause, is not admissible, except under certain circumstances.

Williams v. State, 79 Miss. 555, 31 So. 197; Washington v. State, 93 Miss. 270, 46 So. 539; Martino v. State, 98 Miss. 355, 53 So. 777; Moore v. State, 102 Miss. 148, 59 So. 3; Byrd v. State, 154 Miss. 742, 123 So. 867.

A witness cannot be corroborated by proving that on other occasions he had made statements conforming to his testimony, for such statements are but hearsay.

Owens v. State, 82 Miss. 25, 33 So. 718, 720, 21 L. R. A. (N. S.) 782.

W. D. Conn, Jr., Assistant Attorney-General, for the state.

Everything that happened in the store from the time defendants appeared on the scene was a joint action and, as such, was a part of the res gestae.

Sparks v. State, 113 Miss. 266, 74 So. 123.

It is well settled that one who is present with an avowed intention to aid is a participant in the homicide.

Harper v. State, 82 Miss. 402, 35 So. 572; Cody v. State, 167 Miss. 150, 148 So. 627; McCoy v. State, 91 Miss. 257, 44 So. 814.

Ordinarily, it is true, proof of other crimes is not admissible. But there are a few exceptions to this rule, one of them being that it is permissible, to show other offenses where they are a part of the res gestae.

Mackie v. State, 138 Miss. 740, 103 So. 379; Bond v. State, 128 Miss. 792, 91 So. 461; Simmons v. State, 165 Miss. 732, 141 So. 288; Boatwright v. State, 143 Miss. 676, 109 So. 710; Brady v. State, 128 Miss. 575, 91 So. 277; Whittington v. State, 160 Miss. 705, 135 So. 190; Tucker v. State, 103 Miss. 117, 60 So. 65; Smith v. State, 153 Miss. 585, 121 So. 282.

OPINION

McGowen, J.

These defendants were before this court on a former appeal, 168 Miss. 424, 151 So. 558, wherein they were convicted on an attempt to rob with firearms, and sentenced to be hanged. The case was reversed and remanded, whereupon they were indicted for assault and battery with intent to kill and murder, tried and convicted, and sentenced to serve a term of ten years in the state penitentiary.

There were three persons shot on the same occasion: Lewis Ewing, a negro; Wong Fong, a Chinese; and his son, Wong Sing. This latter indictment charged an assault with intent to kill and murder, in the shooting of Lewis Ewing, a negro.

Wong Fong and his son, Wong Sing, operated a grocery store at Green Grove, a community in Coahoma county. On the night of the shooting, Lewis Ewing had promised to take Wong Sing to Bobo. Around seven o'clock he left his room and went to the store of the Chinese. While the Chinese were eating their supper, Ewing sat nearby waiting for them. The doors of the store were locked. Just a few minutes after he had arrived, the defendants, Sam Anderson and George Evans, appeared at the back of the store and asked for a package of cigarettes. Wong Sing got the cigarettes, unlocked the back screen door, and passed the cigarettes out to them, whereupon Sam Anderson jerked the door open and shot Wong Sing, and came on into the store shooting, and wounded Wong Fong. At the same time Ewing intercepted Anderson in an attempt to prevent him from further shooting Wong Fong, and while he was scuffling with Anderson, George Evans came up and shot him three times.

Both of the defendants were positively identified by Lewis Ewing in his testimony. Wong Fong positively identified Anderson, but could not identify George Evans, who came into the store just after Anderson had shot and wounded Ewing.

Hunter Scott, a policeman of Clarksdale, testified that he and another arrested the defendants shortly afterwards in the city of Clarksdale; that he and Birdsong, another officer, took three negroes, two of them being the defendants in this case, before Lewis Ewing, and that Ewing pointed out and identified the defendants as being the persons who shot him and the two Chinese; and that this statement was made within the hearing and presence of the defendants.

The defense interposed was an alibi supported by the testimony of the two defendants, and two negro women inmates of a certain rooming house in Clarksdale where the defendants were arrested.

The defendants testified that they were not present in the store where the shooting took place, and, in rebuttal, the state introduced a witness, James Moulton, who stated that he had seen the defendants in the store but at a time and on a day prior to, the shooting.

1. Appellants, the defendants, first urge that Sam Anderson was entitled to a peremptory instruction. There is no merit in this contention. While Ewing, the injured man, was trying to prevent Anderson from shooting the old Chinese, Evans ran up and shot Ewing. The fact that Anderson did not actually fire the shot under the circumstances of this case does not render him any the less guilty when the jury was warranted in concluding that the two appellants were acting together, the one aiding and abetting the other in shooting the two Chinese and Ewing. The act of either defendant was the joint action of both. Evans, in firing, was aiding and abetting Anderson in carrying out what appeared to be a wholesale killing of the occupants of the store, and Anderson was there and on hand to take part in whatever crime that was to be committed. See Cody v. State, 167 Miss. 150, 148 So. 627; Clark v. State, 113 Miss. 201, 74 So. 127; McCoy v. State, 91 Miss. 257, 44 So. 814; Harper v. State, 83 Miss. 402, 35 So. 572. The acts of Anderson show that he was there to commit a crime, and the act of Evans also, in that he joined in and participated with Anderson in the commission of the crime. The evidence was ample to warrant Anderson's conviction.

2. It is next contended that the court erred in admitting, over the objection of appellants, the evidence of the shooting of Wong Fong and Wong Sing by Anderson. The Chinese, with Ewing, were shot down within a very short space of time--as fast as the persons operating the pistols could fire them--and the shooting of these three men was so closely connected as not to be separable. The main transaction, i. e., the shooting of Ewing by Anderson, could not be shown intelligently without showing the facts in connection with the shooting of Wong Fong and Wong Sing. It was all one transaction. The three crimes were so closely connected that each was a part of the res gestae of the other.

The proof of another offense is admissible where the main transaction cannot be...