Benjamin v. State
| Decision Date | 12 January 1915 |
| Docket Number | 184 |
| Parties | BENJAMIN v. STATE. |
| Court | Alabama Court of Appeals |
Appeal from City Court of Montgomery; Armstead Brown, Judge.
Clem Benjamin was convicted of grand larceny, and he appeals. Affirmed.
L.A Sanderson, of Montgomery, for appellant.
R.C Brickell, Atty. Gen., and T.H. Seay, Asst. Atty. Gen., for the State.
Defendant was convicted of grand larceny, and on appeal his counsel urge that the lower court committed error in the admission of evidence, in two particulars, and in refusing written charges 9 and 12.
Clearly the court was, as is first insisted, in error in permitting the state's witness Sims to testify that some one told him (witness) over the phone that:
The court was probably led into the error of admitting this evidence upon the assumption that the person talking was a police officer, and that the defendant had been arrested and was within the presence and hearing of the officer at the time the latter was so talking over the phone and therein charging defendant with crime. There was some basis for such an inference at the time the message was let in, evidently misleading also the defendant's counsel, which we judge from the fact that one of the objections interposed to it by him was "that it was a declaration made by a third party in the presence of defendant."
Later it developed that defendant was not present; and thereupon the court on motion of defendant's counsel excluded and ruled out from the consideration of the jury this telephone message, and thereby cured the error of admitting it.
It appears that the defendant was a porter in the store from which the goods were stolen, and that, among the articles taken, was a lady's dress, which was found, on the day the defendant was arrested, concealed behind the store, and that, when found, the ticket bearing the price mark ($35), which had formerly been on the dress, had been removed from it; and one of the state's witnesses was permitted to testify, over defendant's objection, that after defendant was arrested, and while he was being carried to jail, there dropped from his clothes a ticket like that that had been on the dress, bearing the price mark $35.
The insistence here of defendant's counsel, which is predicated upon his objection in the lower court raising that point, is that the ticket itself was the best evidence of its contents, and that secondary evidence of such contents was not admissible until loss of the ticket had been shown. This is undoubtedly the rule with respect to documents; but counsel overlook the fact that there are...
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Jennings v. Commonwealth, Record No. 0063–15–1.
...price tags themselves, does not violate the best evidence rule. Bell v. State, 364 So.2d 420 (Ala.Crim.App.1978) ; Benjamin v. State, 12 Ala.App. 148, 67 So. 792 (1915). These two cases are anomalies, contrary not only to Virginia's cases addressing the best evidence rule, but also to the h......
- Moore v. State
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State v. O'Dell
...& N.R. Co., 310 Ill.App. 563, 35 N.E.2d 81, 85 (1941), rev'd on other grounds, 379 Ill. 522, 42 N.E.2d 86 (1942); Benjamin v. State, 12 Ala.App. 148, 67 So. 792, 793 (1915); 29 Am.Jur.2d, Evidence, § 477, p. 535; 32A C.J.S. Evidence § 792(9), p. Where an object is an inscribed chattel, the ......
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Bell v. State
...that chattels which bear an inscription might fall within the best evidence rule; but the Alabama cases have not so held. Benjamin v. State, 12 Ala.App. 148, 67 So. 792, held that the rule does not apply to: directions on a parcel; words written on a valise; and labels attached to jugs and ......