Fernandez v. State
| Citation | 144 P. 640,16 Ariz. 269 |
| Decision Date | 07 December 1914 |
| Docket Number | Criminal 360 |
| Parties | JUAN FERNANDEZ, Appellant, v. STATE, Respondent |
| Court | Arizona Supreme Court |
APPEAL from a judgment of the Superior Court of the County of Yavapai. Frank O. Smith, Judge. Affirmed.
The facts are stated in the opinion.
Mr. J Ralph Tascher and Mr. Neil C. Clark, for Appellant.
Mr. G P. Bullard, Attorney General, and Mr. Leslie C. Hardy Assistant to the Attorney General, for Respondent.
The appellant was convicted of the crime of murder and sentenced to life imprisonment. He appeals and assigns two errors.
His first assignment is: "The court erred in overruling the objection made on the trial by the defendant, to the competency, as a witness, of one Mary Wolsey, and Apache-Mohave Indian squaw, a witness for the state, which objection was based on the ground that said Mary Wolsey did not understand the obligation of an oath, and was therefore incompetent to testify, for the reason that upon voir dire said Mary Wolsey did not show that she understood the obligation, of an oath, but, on the contrary, showed conclusively that she had no understanding whatsoever of such obligation, and was therefore incompetent to testify as a witness."
The second assignment is in the same language, except that it is directed at the ruling of the court as to the competency of Dolores Roderiquez, a witness for the state.
Section 1226, Penal Code of 1913, provides that:
The exceptions to the general rule as above laid down are: (1) Persons of unsound minds at the time of their production for examination; (2) children under ten years of age who appear incapable of receiving just impressions of the facts respecting which they are examined, or of relating them truly, cannot be witnesses; and (3) persons sustaining confidential relations to each other, except upon consent, may not be witnesses. Id., 1227 and 1228.
The witness Mary Wolsey was an aged Indian woman and was laboring under none of the disabilities above enumerated, unless it should be that she was afflicted with mental unsoundness. On her voir dire, she said she understood what an oath was, but in answer to the question, "Do you understand what the result would be if you were to tell a lie?" her answer was that she would tell no lie, or that she would "show what she had seen, that's all." It can hardly be said that these answers were any evidence of an unsound mind, or that...
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State v. Fisher
...51 Ariz. 357, 77 P.2d 203 (1938) (questioning of witness concerning membership in a particular church was improper); Fernandez v. State, 16 Ariz. 269, 144 P. 640 (1914) (questions to an aged woman concerning her belief in God or the Great Spirit were improper), and an attempt to exculpate a......
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State v. Purcell
...51 Ariz. 357, 77 P.2d 203 (1938) (questioning of witness concerning membership in a particular church was improper); Fernandez v. State, 16 Ariz. 269, 144 P. 640 (1914)(questions to an aged woman concerning her belief in God or the Great Spirit were improper), or attempts to exculpate a def......
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State v. Eisenstein
...attends.' (Emphasis supplied.) The constitutional provision quoted above has been considered in two Arizona cases: Fernandez v. State, 16 Ariz. 269, 144 P. 640, and Tucker v. Reil, 51 Ariz. 357, 77 P.2d 203. In the first case, the court merely ruled that questions put to an aged Indian woma......
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State v. Collier
...shall any person be incompetent as a witness or juror in consequence of his opinion on matters of religion * * *.' In Fernandez v. State, 16 Ariz. 269, 144 P. 640, 641, in which the competency of an Indian woman was questioned, the ground that she did not understand the nature of an oath, t......