Buchanan v. State
| Decision Date | 22 February 1928 |
| Parties | BUCHANAN v. STATE. |
| Court | Florida Supreme Court |
Error to Circuit Court, Taylor County; Hal W. Adams, Judge.
J. W Buchanan was convicted of first degree murder, and he brings error.
Affirmed.
Syllabus by the Court
On appeal from conviction, plaintiff in error has burden clearly to show error. The burden is upon the plaintiff in error to make the error complained of plainly to appear.
Proof of premeditated design to kill deceased may be shown by circumstances in case developed at trial; in prosecution for murder, evidence held sufficient to show premeditated design to kill deceased. Proof of the existence of a premeditated design to kill the deceased in a trial for murder may be shown by the circumstances in the case developed at the trial.
Whether homicide was committed with premeditated design to kill or in sudden passion is for jury. Whether a homicide was committed with a premeditated design to kill or in a sudden paroxysm of passion is for the jury to determine from the evidence.
Requested instructions not bearing on defense are properly refused; in prosecution for murder, refusal of instruction based on defense of home where only defense of person was set up held proper; in prosecution for murder, where defendant said deceased had told him they had come to search house, to which he consented, refusal of instructions relating to attempted search by officers under warrant held proper. Requested instructions which have no bearing upon the defense are properly refused.
In impaneling jury, better practice is to swear jurors in chief when panel is complete. In impaneling a jury for the trial of a cause, the better practice is to swear the jurors in chief when the panel is complete, and not separately as each is selected.
General objections that evidence is immaterial are too vague for consideration. General objections to evidence that it is immaterial are too vague for consideration.
Where murder is sought to be established by circumstantial evidence objections that facts sought to be proved are immaterial are not favored. Where the allegations of an indictment for murder are sought to be established by circumstantial evidence, objections that facts sought to be proved are immaterial are not favored.
Davis & Pepper, of Perry, for plaintiff in error.
Fred H Davis, Atty. Gen., and H. E. Carter, Asst. Atty. Gen., for the State.
The plaintiff in error was indicted for the murder of J. B Brandt in Taylor county on December 6, 1926. The indictment was filed in January, 1927. The accused was convicted of murder in the first degree, with recommendation to mercy, and was sentenced to life imprisonment in the state prison. He seeks a reversal of the judgment on writ of error.
The facts, which the record fully supports, are in substance as follows:
Buchanan, hereinafter referred to as the defendant, lived with his wife in a four-room cottage about 14 miles from the city of Perry in Taylor county. On the 6th of December, 1926, early during the morning, the defendant left his home with a friend, who had called for him in the latter's automobile, on a proposed deer hunt. Their arrangements for the hunt were not carried out, owing to the failure of one other, who was to have been a member of the party, to meet them at the point of rendezvous, and they returned to the Buchanan home about half past ten o'clock in the forenoon. Buchanan and his friend, whose name was D. W. Blue, went into the house on Buchanan's invitation, who requested his wife to prepare a lunch for himself and friend, as they were going squirrel hunting; the deer hunt for the day having been abandoned.
Mrs. Buchanan, Blue, and a small boy, Orin McDaniel, who was there, went into the kitchen which was located to the south of and adjoining the west room of the house through which they had passed in going into the kitchen. The defendant, according to his statement, remained in the west room selecting shells for the guns to be used in the proposed squirrel hunt. Mrs. Buchanan was preparing the lunch; Blue was bathing his face and hands, and Buchanan was standing near the door between the main room and the kitchen, when two men, J. P. Brandt and W. C. Mobray, arrived in an automobile at the front gate of the yard, defined by a picket fence surrounding the house. They sounded the automobile horn, and Buchanan went out to meet them. He traversed the space between the front porch of the house and gate about 25 feet, and passed out of the gate to where the automobile was. It had apparently come from a point eastward to the house, and had stopped in front of the gate as if going in a southwesterly direction. The defendant talked with the man at the wheel of the automobile, and invited him and his companion into the house. The three arriving at the porch or veranda which extended across the entire front of the house which faced north toward the front gate, Buchanan stated to them that he would tell his wife of their presence.
From this point the state's case as to what occurred, except that the two men, Mobray and Brandt, were killed by Buchanan, depends on circumstantial evidence. The question whether in killing Brandt, one of the men, for whose murder Buchanan was tried and convicted, the latter acted unlawfully and from a premeditated design, can be determined only from the circumstances.
The two men who were killed were internal revenue officers working under a superior and upon his directions. The latter's name was J. H. Lee. He said that the position he held was that of 'deputy prohibition administrator of the state of Florida.' The evidence tends to support the fact that both men, Mobray and Brandt, were armed with pistols when they arrived at the Buchanan home; that Buchanan was not armed when he went out to their automobile and invited them to the house, but that he had several rifles, shotguns, and pistols in the house. The shotguns and pistols seem to have been loaded at the time.
The house is a three or four room cottage. The north side of it is the front side, across which the porch extends the entire width. A partition runs through the house from the north to the south dividing it into two rooms. Two doors open from the porch to the two rooms respectively; one door to the west, the other to the east of the partition. It was in the west room that Buchanan kept his rifles, pistols, and shotguns. The pistols were lying on a bureau, or some such article of furniture, located near the porch door on the east side of the room. The shotguns and rifles were near the southeast corner of the room against the partition. The automatic shotgun, the one which the defendant used during the transaction, may have been near the bureau or 'dresser.'
The defense was 'self-defense' or justification. The defendant testified that the reason he shot Brandt was that 'he started to shoot me first, and I had to shoot him for my own protection.' If the killing of the two men occurred under the circumstances related by the defendant, the verdict of murder was incorrect. The case of the state was made out, if at all, before Buchanan testified. He was the last witnesses called.
If the evidence adduced at the trial before the defendant testified was insufficient to show that Buchanan's action in shooting Brandt was unlawful, and from a premeditated design to kill him, or some other person, his testimony was unnecessary, as that burden rested upon the state. We discover nothing in the testimony of the defendant which in any degree gives support to the state's case, unless his evidence is inherently illogical or unsound.
The unlawful and premeditated qualities of Buchanan's act in killing Brandt, therefore, must be found in the facts, the circumstances revealed by the testimony of witnesses, and other evidence adduced prior to the defendant's testimony.
Those circumstances, which the jury were amply justified from the evidence in accepting as true, were in substance as follows: Mobray and Brandt were federal revenue officers. They went to the defendant's house for the purpose of searching it for alcoholic liquors. That upon arriving at the house they notified the defendant of their presence and purpose. The defendant, upon being informed of their purpose, invited them to the house. In company of the defendant, they came to the house and entered the porch or veranda. Mobray at that time took into his hand a pouch of tobacco, and began filling a pipe, which he intended to smoke. He had a match in his hand with which he intended to light the tobacco. This pouch of tobacco was shot from this hand by Buchanan, and fell upon the floor of the porch, scattering tobacco upon it. Mobray fell mortally wounded at the northeast corner of the yard, where he had retreated about 25 feet from the house.
Brandt's body was found under the porch westward of the steps, lying upon the left side, his head under the main body of the house, and his body and legs under the porch, his feet about three or four feet from the edge. Brandt's body had many wounds in it; one in the left shoulder made by a steel jacketed bullet, which ranged through the body, and was cut from the body by Dr. Green in 'front of the clavicle on the left side.' One of the defendant's pistols according to his statement, carried that kind of a bullet, and he emptied that pistol in shooting at the two men before using the shotgun, the shells of which were loaded with 'buckshot.' Brandt was struck with a load of buckshot in the upper abdomen; one shot 'came out to the left of the right nipple'; two went in the 'umbilical, and came out below the left nipple.' Wadding was embedded in some of the wounds to a depth of...
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