Bryan v. State, 16837.
| Decision Date | 11 October 1949 |
| Docket Number | No. 16837.,16837. |
| Parties | BRYAN. v. STATE. |
| Court | Georgia Supreme Court |
Robert Frank Bryan was convicted in Superior Court, Chatham County, David S. Atkinson, J, of murder, without a recommendation, and he brought error.
The Supreme Court, Atkinson, P. J, affirmed judgment, holding that evidence sustained conviction; that admission of a photograph showing body of deceased and refusal to grant a mistrial for argument of Solicitor General was not error.
Robert Frank Bryan was convicted of murder without a recommendation. The deceased was Nicholas A. Pahno, who was shot and killed in his store in Savannah about midnight. There was testimony of a witness that, just prior to the shooting, he saw the accused and the deceased in the store, that the accused had a pistol in one hand and the other hand on the cash register, and that the witness became frightened and ran away. A confession was introduced, in which the accused admitted the killing and robbery of the deceased. There was expert testimony that the pistol found in the possession of the accused was the pistol that fired the bullets that killed the deceased. The accused in his statement denied the killing, stating that he was elsewhere at that time, and that the confession was not voluntary, but induced by threats and coercion. In accounting for the possession of the pistol and certain money which had been traced to him, he said that the night the deceased was killed another person told the accused that this person had killed the deceased, and, by threats, had required him to take the pistol and money.
William A. Wells, Jr., Jack E. Miller, Savannah, for plaintiff in error.
Andrew J. Ryan, Jr., Sol. Gen, Sylvan A. Garfunkel, Herman W. Coolidge, Asst. Sols. Gen, Savannah, Eugene Cook, Atty. Gen, Frank H. Edwards, Atlanta, for defendant in error.
ATKINSON, Presiding Justice (after stating the foregoing facts).
1. The facts were questions for the jury to pass upon, and the evidence was sufficient to authorize the verdict.
2. Passing to the second ground of the amended motion, the first being an amplification of the general grounds, error is alleged in the admission in evidence of a photograph of the deceased with clothes pulled back so as to show the location of the wounds; the objection being that, death and location of the wounds already having been proven, the picture was introduced for the purpose of inflaming the minds of the jury, and was endowed with no other probative value.
Photographs when properly identified by preliminary proof, as showing an accurate representation of an object which is material to the issue, are admissible. Johnson v. State, 158 Ga. 192(2), 123 S.E. 120. The location of the wounds was material to the issue. Franklin v. State, 69 Ga. 36(1), 47 Am.Rep. 748; Butler v. State, 142 Ga. 286(9), 82 S.E. 654; Shafer v. State, 193 Ga. 748(7), 20 S.E.2d 34; Russell v. State, 196 Ga. 275(1), 26 S.E.2d 528; Weaver v. State, 199 Ga. 267(3), 34 S.E. 2d 163. To exclude the photographs onthe ground that there had already been testimony as to the location of the wounds, would, in effect, preclude the State from establishing a material fact by more than one source of evidence. To exclude it on the ground that it would inflame the minds of the jury, would prevent the State from establishing facts material to the issue. A relevant and material fact is not subject to an objection that it would inflame the minds of the jurors.
3. The third special ground alleges error by the admission in evidence of a confession....
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