Ayers v. State

• Decision Date: 12 December 1911
• Parties: AYERS v. STATE.
• Court: Florida Supreme Court

57 So. 349

62 Fla. 14

AYERS v. STATE.

Florida Supreme Court, Division B.

December 12, 1911

Headnotes Filed February 12, 1912.

Error to Circuit Court, Marion County; W. S. Bullock, Judge.

William G. Ayers was convicted of murder in the first degree, and brings error. Affirmed.

Syllabus by the Court

SYLLABUS

It is not error to refuse to give a charge in a criminal trial that confines the doctrine of reasonable doubt to individual jurors, or that segregates the jury as a body into individual members, and requiring each of such members to be free from reasonable doubt before they can return a verdict.

A state's witness, who was some distance from the deceased at the time he was killed, testified that 'he believed' he heard the deceased exclaim, between two shots fired at the time, calling the defendant's name in the exclamation. Held, that it was not error to refuse to strike this evidence, on the ground that the witness qualified it with the expression that 'he believed' he heard the exclamation testified to.

COUNSEL Raymond B. Bullock, for plaintiff in error.

Park Trammell, Atty. Gen., and C. O. Andrews, for the State.

OPINION

TAYLOR J.

The plaintiff in error, in the circuit court of Marion county was indicted, tried, and convicted of murder in the first degree, with a recommendation to the mercy of the court, by the jury, and sentenced to life imprisonment, and brings the judgment here for review by writ of error.

One of the errors assigned and argued here is the refusal of the trial judge to give the following instruction to the jury requested by the defendant:

'The defendant is entitled to, and it is the sworn duty of every member of the jury to individually give him, the benefit of this reasonable doubt which may arise from the evidence or the lack of evidence; and until the jury, and each member thereof, can say that they, and each of them, have an abiding and honest conviction, to a moral certainty, of the truth of the charge against him as preferred in the indictment, it will be your duty not to find and return the defendant guilty. The court further instructs you that such belief, to a moral certainty, is not sufficient to convict and find the defendant guilty, unless such belief is the result of sworn evidence, which, in the mind of the jury and jurors, is sufficient to establish guilt beyond and to the exclusion of every reasonable doubt.'

There was no error in refusing to give this instruction. It was well calculated to mislead the jury into the idea that it was their duty to acquit the accused if any one or more of them entertained a reasonable doubt as to his guilt whether the rest of them were free of any such doubt or not. The judge had already charged the jury fully and properly on the point of reasonable doubt; and it was not error to refuse this instruction, which sought to confine the question of reasonable doubt to individual members of the jury. Of course, a verdict must be concurred in by the unanimous vote of the entire jury, and no honest juror will concur in a verdict of conviction if he entertains a...