Denmark v. State
| Decision Date | 17 April 1928 |
| Citation | 116 So. 757,95 Fla. 757 |
| Parties | DENMARK et al. v. STATE. |
| Court | Florida Supreme Court |
Error to Circuit Court, Duval County; Daniel A. Simmons, Judge.
Gordon Denmark and Berta Hall were convicted of murder, and they bring error.
Affirmed.
Syllabus by the Court
Assignments of error, not argued in briefs for plaintiff in error, may be treated as abandoned. Assignments of error, not argued in the briefs of counsel for plaintiff in error, may be treated as abandoned.
Mere statement in brief that ruling of which complaint was made was erroneous cannot be considered as argument of assignment of error based thereon. When the brief upon an assignment of error consists merely of a statement that the ruling of which complaint was made is erroneous such statement cannot be considered as an argument on the point.
All circumstances attending extrajudicial confession should be received to enable court to determine admissibility and jury to consider its value. All the circumstances attending an extrajudicial confession should be received that the court may determine its admissibility and the jury consider its value.
Technical error in excluding evidence may be cured by admission of same evidence by another witness or accused; in prosecution for murder, error in excluding evidence of trick in obtaining confession by codefendant held cured by fact that defendant confirmed such confession. Technical error in excluding evidence when tendered through one witness may be cured by the admission of the evidence without objection at a later time during the trial through the testimony of another witness or the testimony of the accused himself.
Voluntary confession procured by artifice or deception is admissible. A confession voluntarily made but procured by artifice or deception is admissible.
Order in which evidence is produced at trial is discretionary with trial court; order in which evidence is produced at trial will not be interfered with on appeal except for abuse of trial court's discretion. The order in which evidence is produced at a trial in any case is discretionary with the court and will not be interfered with unless clearly abused.
Evidence held to sustain conviction of two defendants for murder. Evidence examined and found sufficient to sustain a verdict of murder against both defendants.
R. E. Stillman and Samuel B. Wilson, both of Jacksonville, for plaintiffs in error.
Fred H Davis, Atty. Gen., and H. E. Carter, Asst. Atty. Gen., for the State.
The plaintiffs in error were convicted of the murder of James Hall, the husband of Berta Hall, one of the plaintiffs in error. To the judgment and sontence of death they took a writ of error. Assignments of error were filed in this court in behalf of the defendants severally, but there is no brief here upon the assignments in behalf of Gordon Denmark. A brief was filed in behalf of Berta Hall and the case orally argued by her counsel on February 1, 1928.
As to Gordon Denmark the assignments of error may be treated as abandoned. See Beville v. State, 61 Fla. 8, 55 So 854; Cannon v. State, 62 Fla. 20, 57 So. 240; Smith v. State, 65 Fla. 56, 61 So. 120; Lambright v. State, 34 Fla. 564, 16 So. 582; Holland v. State, 39 Fla. 178, 22 So. 298; Mathis v. State, 45 Fla. 46, 34 So. 287; Lamb v State, 50 Fla. 106, 38 So. 906; Cross v. State, 89 Fla. 212, 103 So. 636, Davis v. State, 87 Fla. 505, 100 So. 739.
The assignments of error in behalf of Berta Hall may likewise be treated as abandoned by strictly applying the rule because the brief contains no argument, principle of law, or citation of authority in support of the assignments. Where the brief upon an assignment of error consists merely of a statement that the ruling complained of is erroneous, it cannot be considered as an argument on the point. This court has often called attention to that interpretation of the rule. It follows that when there is a mere amplification of the statement, but which in the last analysis amounts to nothing more than a bare challenge or objection to the ruling, it cannot be considered as argument.
The fourteen assignments of error made in behalf of Berta Hall may under the rule be considered as abandoned, but in view of the serious nature of the case, the comparatively youthful age of the defendants, the unfeeling cruelty of the act with which they were charged and convicted, which seemed to show them to be calloused to every gentle impulse, we have examined the record to discover error that may be considered harmful.
The case, as shown by the bill of exceptions, was briefly as follows: The deceased, James Hall, husband of Berta, was killed June 6, 1926, in front of his store, which was located in the northern part of the city of Jacksonville at Twenty-Sixth street and Cleveland avenue. The killing occurred Sunday morning about 1 o'clock a. m. According to the physician's description of the wounds inflicted upon the man's face and head which produced his death he was fired upon at close range by a person who used a shotgun. The defendant Denmark fired the shot. Pursuant to a plan formed by him and Berta to kill her husband, he waited for his victim for a long while under or near a flight of steps which were built on the outside of the store building as the means of access to the second floor above, which was used as an apartment house. Berta Hall and her husband lived in the same building, probably on the ground floor. The deceased conducted a grocery store in that building. He had just returned from delivering goods. A man named Woods, who also lived in the same building on the second floor, returned with Hall. They both went upstairs. After a short time Berta Hall came upstairs to Woods' room and asked her husband to come down to the store as she was afraid to be there alone. Hall then descended the stairs to the sidewalk in front of his store. Denmark was concealed under the staircase waiting for Hall. When the latter came down the stairs to the sidewalk Denmark shot him. When Woods heard the explosion of the gun he came down immediately to the sidewalk and found Hall lying where he had fallen. Berta and her sister were in the store. The former asked her sister and sister and Woods to go for Denmark, who lived around the corner on another street.
Denmark confessed that he committed the murder. He said that he had been persuaded to do it by Berta, who supplied him with the shotgun and told him when to shoot; that the matter was planned by them, and that night when Hall returned she said to Denmark that she would go upstairs and get Hall to come down and that when he came Denmark should shoot him. Hall came down, and, according to Denmark, stumbled, tripped, or, unbalanced from drunkenness, fell to the sidewalk; while lying there Denmark shot him. All of this Denmark confessed. The confession of murder in which Denmark implicated Berta Hall was confirmed by her in a confession to Officer Smith, in which she said, alluding to Denmark:
'If I had known the damned fool didn't have sense enough to keep his mouth shut I would have killed him (alluding to her husband) myself.'
In this connection it may not be out of place to say that the defendant Gordon Denmark offered by his counsel to introduce evidence to show that the confession made by him to Officer Smith was induced by a fraud practiced by the police in allowing a person who pretended to have the power of divination to enter the defendant's cell at the jail and by the use of playing cards so worked upon the feelings of the ignorant, superstitious youth that he was induced by fear and the hope of bettering his spiritual condition to confess as he later did to Officer Smith.
That evidence should have been admitted. It was error to have excluded it in that all the circumstances attending an extrajudicial confession should be received that the court may determine its admissibility and the jury consider its value. See 3 Ency. of Ev. 346, 347; Gantling v State, 40 Fla. 237, 23 So. 857. But we think the error was harmless so far as the defendant Berta Hall was concerned, as the story,...
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Wyche v. State
...OR MISREPRESENTATION This Court and other courts have held that not all deception will invalidate a confession. Denmark v. State, 95 Fla. 757, 116 So. 757, 762 (1928); see also Hoffa v. United States, 385 U.S. 293, 301-02, 87 S.Ct. 408, 17 L.Ed.2d 374 (1966) (holding that defendant's statem......
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Palmes v. State
...substantially the same matters are presented to the jury through testimony of the same or some other witness. Denmark v. State, 95 Fla. 757, 761, 116 So. 757, 759 (1928); Baker v. State, 30 Fla. 41, 11 So. 492 (1892), overruled in part, Tipton v. State, 97 So.2d 277 At trial appellant testi......
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Wyche v. State, 1D03-5211.
...far from clear. The rule has long been established that deception and trickery alone will not invalidate a confession, Denmark v. State, 95 Fla. 757, 116 So. 757 (1928), although they are factors to be considered, Gaspard v. State, 387 So.2d 1016 (Fla. 1st DCA 1980). An important distinctio......
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Grant v. State, 31760
...that would result in untold miscarriage of justice in future cases. I dissent. THORNAL, J., concurs. 1 See Denmark v. State, 95 Fla. 757, 762, 116 So. 757, 759 (1928): 'It is fear of material or physical harm, or hope of material reward, which renders a confession inadmissible. * * * A conf......