Hall v. State
| Decision Date | 05 April 1935 |
| Parties | HALL et al. v. STATE. |
| Court | Florida Supreme Court |
Error to Circuit Court, Dade County; Worth W. Trammell, Judge.
Henry Hall and another were convicted of murder in the second degree, and they bring error.
Reversed and new trial awarded.
George S. Okell, of Miami, for plaintiffs in error.
Cary D Landis, Atty. Gen., and Roy Campbell, Asst. Atty. Gen., for the State.
Freddie Ezra Arvinger, James Jones, and Henry Hall were jointly indicted for murder in the first degree. Upon a trial they were found guilty and sentenced to state prison for murder in the second degree. Writ of error brings the several judgments against Hall and Jones here for review.
One alleged procedural error is assigned as to the denial of accused's right of argument which, under a proper reservation of an exception to the court's ruling complained of, might be held to constitute a reversible error. We find, however, that the assignment of it in the record is not legally supported by any appropriate exception taken during the trial to warrant allowance of the same on the instant writ of error.
The statute, sections 8385, 8386, C. G. L., sections 6080, 6081, R. G. S., securing to an accused defendant's attorney the right to make the closing argument to the jury in any criminal trial where such defendant offers no testimony in his own behalf, except his own, is a salutary and remedial rule of procedure designed to vest in the defendant on trial (not in the lawyers representing him) a substantial, procedural right. So considered, the trial court has no legal sanction for depriving a defendant of such right merely because a particular defendant may have employed for his own defense an attorney who also happens to simultaneously represent a separate defendant being jointly tried with him.
By the defendant's statutory right to the closing argument to the jury under the above sections of the statute is meant the right to have his counsel make an argument to the jury after the state's counsel has fully completed all of his own arguments against him as one of the defendants on trial in a case wherein he has offered no testimony except his own. This right, as has just been said, is not lost to a defendant merely because his attorney happens to also represent a joint defendant who has not earned the same statutory right to have his own counsel as such make a closing argument to the jury. Especially is this true as to a defendant in a case where the state, over such defendant's objection, has insisted on a joint trial of several defendants and has urged upon the trial court its denial of a motion for a severance made by such defendant.
But in order to make the point of denial of the right to a closing argument available as error, the injured defendant must have tendered and been refused the right to have his counsel make a closing argument subsequent to a closing argument against him made for the prosecution. And in the event of his being denied, he must then and there have noted a proper exception to the court's ruling in denial. Complaint by exception to the denial of a motion for a new trial embracing such ground where no earlier exception has been noted to support it comes too late for appellate review.
Exceptions to rulings of a trial court should be taken and noted at the time the ruling complained of is made, so that the trial court may be thereby warned of an intention to predicate an appeal thereon and be given an opportunity to correct or cure any error it has made by reversing its ruling should it upon further consideration decide so to do. An appropriate exception is also required to be timely interposed in order that opposing counsel may, for his own protection in the event of a favorable judgment, consent to a reversal of any erroneous ruling the trial judge may have made on his insistence and over the opposite party's objection or protest. There are exceptions to this rule...
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45 593 Herring v. New York 8212 6587
...100 Ala. 26, 14 So. 570 (1894); People v. Green, 99 Cal. 564, 34 P. 231 (1893); State v. Hoyt, 47 Conn. 518 (1880); Hall v. State, 119 Fla. 38, 160 So. 511 (1935); Williams v. State, 60 Ga. 367 (1878); Porter v. State, 6 Ga.App. 770, 65 S.E. 814 (1909); State v. Gilbert, 65 Idaho 210, 142 P......
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