Crawford v. State
| Citation | 70 Fla. 323,70 So. 374 |
| Parties | CRAWFORD v. STATE. |
| Decision Date | 17 November 1915 |
| Court | United States State Supreme Court of Florida |
Error to Circuit Court, Dade County; Geo. Couper Gibbs, Judge pro hac vice.
Florian Reuben Crawford was convicted of murder, and brings error. Reversed, and new trial ordered.
Syllabus by the Court
In the trial of an indictment for murder where the state, in rebuttal, offers evidence of an immaterial circumstance which is objected to by the defendant, and such circumstance neither contradicts, qualifies, limits, nor explains any matter brought out by the defendant, but its admission by the court is calculated to impart to it an importance and significance which it should not have, to the defendant's injury, the admission of such evidence is reversible error.
Section 3989, General Statutes of 1906, providing for a view of the premises by the jury, is not obligatory upon the court, who may order the view to be taken by the jury as in the court's discretion the necessity of the trial requires.
An involuntary confession of the defendant is inadmissible as evidence against him, even though he takes the stand as a witness in his own behalf, and the involuntary confession is sought to be used for the purpose of impeaching him as a witness.
Testimony which is admitted without objection although irrelevant and immaterial at the time it is offered and would be excluded upon proper objection being made, may, when all the testimony in the case is in, become relevant as an explanation of other testimony, or as rebuttal evidence, in which case a motion to strike it on the ground of irrelevancy should be denied.
A verdict signed by a juror as foreman with the initials of his Christian name and his surname in full, instead of an abbreviation of his first name and surname in full, as it appears in the panel, does not vitiate the verdict.
Where one assignment of error attacks the entire general charge of the court, the assignment will not be considered by the appellate court except to ascertain if any one of the instructions given was properly given, and if the appellate court finds one of such instructions to have been without error the assignment will not be sustained.
The same rule applies where several instructions have been requested and refused, and one assignment of error attacks en masse the court's refusal to give such instructions. The appellate court will not consider such assignment of error except to ascertain whether one of such instructions was properly refused, and so finding, will not sustain the assignment.
COUNSEL Geo. A. Worley & Son, of Miami, and A. Z Adkins, of Starke, for plaintiff in error.
T. F. West, Atty. Gen., and C. O. Andrews, Asst Atty. Gen., for the state.
The plaintiff in error, hereafter referred to as the defendant, was convicted in the circuit court for Dade county of the murder of Joseph C. Keene, and was sentenced to punishment by death. The case is here upon writ of error. The crime was alleged to have been committed in Dade county, Fla., on the 19th day of March, 1914, the indictment was filed May 15th of that year, and the defendant was put upon trial on the 25th day of that month.
There was evidence tending to show that the defendant and the deceased had been friends for many years, they moved from another part of the state to Dade county, owned farms adjoining each other, at one time with their families lived together in the same house and were members of the same church, although shortly prior to the difficulty the church had been divided into two factions, the deceased going with one faction and the defendant going with the other. Some time before the difficulty in which Keene was killed, the precise time is not shown, the defendant removed himself and family to another house in the neighborhood, but the families of the defendant and deceased continued their friendly relations; frequently visiting at each other's homes. On the morning of the 19th of March, 1914, the deceased, in company with his son, a lad of about 13 years, went to his field, and on the way stopped at the defendant's house and called to him to 'come on, let's go,' or was called to by the defendant and invited to 'come in,' the witnesses do not agree on this incident. The defendant did not go with the deceased, nor did the deceased go into the defendant's house, but went on with his son to the field. The defendant, who had been taking medicine the day before, and according to his statement was not well, remained at his house for awhile until his little girl left for school, then mounting his bicycle started for Fulford, a small town near by. Passing near the residence of the deceased, he turned, and going as far as the rock road left his bicycle there and went to the house. The daughter of the deceased, Martha, a girl about 15 years old, was alone at the house. The defendant asked her for some epsom salts. She showed him where it was and he went into the house and was in the act of drinking it, after having put it in a cup with water, when the deceased appeared with a drawn pistol, and in an angry and threatening manner and violent words ordered the defendant off the premises. The pistol was, according to descriptions of it, a very formidable weapon, an automatic Colt's of 32 or 38 caliber. The defendant left the house under the threat of the deceased, conveyed in the following words, in reply to a question from the defendant asking what the latter had done:
The defendant went to Fulford and purchased some articles of merchandise, among which were several gun shells carrying B. B. shot; returning to his house he loaded his gun with one of the shells, got some watermelon seed, his rake, and, taking his gun, started for his field, which was adjoining that of the deceased, and separated from it by a furrow. On the way to the field he fired the gun once or twice, replacing the empty shells with loaded ones; he met Dan Highsmith, a brother-in-law, and asked him to come on and help plant watermelons. Highsmith went with the defendant to the latter's field. In the adjoining field was Keene and his son, attending to tomato plants near the dividing line of the two fields, between 30 and 60 yards away. The testimony is very conflicting on this point. It is true, however, that Keene had removed his coat in which he had carried with him to the field the pistol he had an hour or two before drawn upon the defendant. Seeing the defendant in the adjoining field, Keene went to his coat, picked it up, removed his pistol, taking it in his right hand, straightened his body to an erect position, when the defendant fired his gun at Keene, inflicting wounds which produced the latter's death almost instantly.
The first assignment of error is based upon the action of the court in overruling the defendant's objection to a question propounded by the state attorney to the witness R. E. McDonald on rebuttal. The question was: 'Were there any gun wads between the turn row and these footprints where the young Keene boy said that Crawford was standing?' McDonald replied that he found none, although he examined the ground. The turn row was the line dividing the field of the defendant from that of the deceased. The state had undertaken to show that the defendant, after entering his field, crossed over into the field of the deceased and fired the shot that killed Keene. McDonald had testified, when first introduced by the state, that he saw tracks on Keene's side of the line, and to the finding of a gun wad a few feet from those tracks. The defendant had undertaken to show that the gun was fired by him while on his side of the line, and that after firing the shot he crossed the line and walked a few feet toward the deceased to render him what assistance he could, when Highsmith called him back and advised him not to go, as Keene might shoot him. This was doubtless offered to explain the tracks made by Crawford in Keene's field. McDonald was called to show in rebuttal that the wads from the gun were not found between the turn row, the dividing line, and the point where Crawford stood when he fired the gun, according to the testimony of Keene's son. There was nothing to show that under the conditions existing when the gun was fired, a gun wad, ejected from the gun fired by the defendant in his field at the point where he said he was standing when he fired, could not have fallen between the body of the deceased and the point in the latter's field, where Keene's son said the defendant stood when he fired the shot. The circumstance of McDonald's finding no gun wad between the point in Keene's field, where the state's witness, Jerry Keene, said the defendant stood when he fired the shot, and the line between the two fields, could not therefore be the basis of an inference that the defendant went into Keene's field to fire the shot, and not afterwards, as he claimed.
That the defendant went into Keene's field to fire the shot was a very material question, bearing greatly upon the defense of justification, but between this fact and the finding of no gun wad by McDonald between the line dividing the fields and the point in Keene's field, where it was claimed the defendant stood and fired the shot, there is no relativeness, there being nothing to show that the conditions under which the gun was fired rendered it probable that the gun wads would fall to the ground within a certain distance from the point where the gun was fired.
The question to McDonald...
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