Hall v. State

• Citation: 12 So. 449,31 Fla. 176
• Parties: HALL v. STATE.
• Decision Date: 16 March 1893
• Court: Florida Supreme Court

12 So. 449

31 Fla. 176

HALL v. STATE.

Florida Supreme Court

March 16, 1893

Error to circuit court, Jackson county; W. D. Barnes, Judge.

Buck Hall, Sebe Espy, Choice Adams, and Henry Simmons were jointly indicted for murder. The jury found Buck Hall guilty. His motion for a new trial was denied, and he was sentenced to death, and brings error. Reversed.

Syllabus by the Court

SYLLABUS

1. Under section 2383, Rev. St., it is imperatively necessary that the jury, when they find the defendant guilty under an indictment for murder, shall ascertain and declare by their verdict the degree of unlawful homicide of which they find him guilty. In such a case, a verdict that simply says 'We, the jury, find the defendant guilty,' or 'guilty as charged in the indictment,' is a nullity and no judgment or sentence can legally be pronounced thereon.

2. The following rule from 1 Greenleaf on Evidence, (section 111,) approvingly cited: 'Every one who does enter into a common purpose or design is equally deemed, in law, a party to every act which may afterwards be done by any of the others in furtherance of such common design. Sometimes, for the sake of convenience, the acts or declarations of one are admitted in evidence before sufficient proof is given of the conspiracy; the prosecutor undertaking to furnish such proof in a subsequent state of the cause. But this rests in the discretion of the judge, and is not permitted except under particular and urgent circumstances.'

COUNSEL R. H. Walker, for plaintiff in error.

W. B Lamar, Atty. Gen., for the State.

OPINION

TAYLOR J.

The plaintiff in error, Buck Hall, at the spring term, A. D 1892, of the circuit court for Jackson county, was jointly indicted with Sebe Espy, Choice Adams, and Henry Simmons for the murder of John R. Ely, Jr., on the 9th day of December, 1891.

The indictment contains two counts,--the first, charging all four of the defendants with the murder of the deceased; the second, charging the defendants Hall and Espy with the commission of the murder, and charging Adams and Simmons as being present, counseling, aiding, and abetting the other two therein. On the 13th day of June, A. D. 1892, the day upon which our Revised Statutes went into effect, an order of severance of trial was made as to the defendants Adams and Simmons; and on that day the trial of the plaintiff in error, Buck Hall, alone, was begun; the defendant Sebe Espy not being in custody.

The trial resulted on June 17, 1892, in the following verdict: 'We, the jury, find the defendant, Buck Hall, guilty.'

Upon this verdict, after the denial of a motion for a new trial, the defendant was sentenced to death, and from such sentence comes here by writ of error.

The thirteenth ground of the defendant's motion for a new trial was as follows:

'Because the jury in this case found defendant guilty under an indictment for murder, and they failed, as required by section 2383 of the Revised Statutes, to ascertain by their verdict the degree of unlawful homicide of which he was guilty.'

The eighth assignment of error is the overruling of the motion for new trial; and the ninth assignment of error is the rendition of the judgment or sentence by the court on the verdict of the jury, which fails to ascertain the degree of unlawful homicide of which the defendant was guilty.

Incorporated in our Revised Statutes, as section 2383 thereof, is the following provision: 'When the jury find the defendant guilty under an indictment for murder, they shall ascertain by their verdict the degree of unlawful homicide of which he is guilty; but if the defendant, on arraignment, confesses his guilt, the court shall proceed to determine the degree, upon an examination of the testimony, and pass sentence accordingly.'

This provision of law, that seems for many years to have been embodied in the Criminal Codes of many of the other states, is an entirely new one with us, appearing on our statute book for the first time as part of the lately-adopted Revised Statutes. It went into effect, and became the law of this state, as before stated, on the very day that the plaintiff in error was put upon his trial, and therefore became and was applicable to the proceedings in that trial. Because of the gravity of the case, and of the fact that the question here raised comes before us now for the first time in this state, we have given it the most thorough research and consideration; and we have been unable to find a single decision of any state having a similar statutory provision with reference to verdicts in murder cases that does not hold that a verdict such as the one rendered in this case, in the presence of such statutory requirement, is a nullity, and that no judgment or sentence can legally be pronounced thereon. So far as we have been able to ascertain, Pennsylvania, as early as 1794, was the first state to adopt such a provision, and did so in the following language: 'The jury before whom any person shall be tried shall, if they find such person guilty thereof, ascertain in their verdict whether it be murder of the first or second degree.' In commenting upon the province of the jury under this statute, Chief Justice Thompson, of the supreme court of Pennsylvania, in Lane v. Com., 59 Pa. St. 371, says: 'It must be admitted, we think, that the act makes no distinction, as to the requirement to find the degree of murder, between any of the modes by which it may be perpetrated, as defined in the statute. In all, alike, the requirement applies, without any exception. Even in case of a confession of the crime, and submission to the court, no matter by what means it may have been perpetrated,--whether by poison, lying in wait, or in an attempt to commit either of the enumerated crimes in which intention to kill is not a material inquiry,--the court must, before sentencing, examine witnesses, and determine the degree. The law is imperative, and it is indispensable in the trial of a homicide that the degree of the crime be ascertained, and appear on the record. This is to be done by the jury, where there is a trial, and by the court, where there is a sentence on a confession. It is as essential an element of the verdict as any other fact found by it. It is this which ascertains and fixes the penalty to be attached to the crime, and hence it must appear by the record.'

The state of Maryland, in 1809, adopted the Pennsylvania statute, in the following language: 'The jury before whom any person is indicted for murder shall be tried, shall, if they find such person guilty thereof, ascertain in their verdict whether it be murder in the first or second degree; but, if such person be convicted by confession, the court shall proceed, by examination of witnesses, to determine the degree of the crime, and to give sentence accordingly.' In the case of Ford v. State, 12 Md. 514, where the verdict was simply, 'Guilty,' Le Grand, C.J., delivering the opinion of the supreme court of Maryland, says: 'In most of the states of this Union the act of Pennsylvania has been adopted, in its very words; and we are not aware of any decision, in any of the courts of last resort, where it has been held not to be incumbent on the jury to find, distinctly and unequivocally, the degree of the murder. So far from it, there has been an unbroken uniformity of decision to the contrary. We do not deem it essential to recapitulate the numerous cases in which the act has come under review. It is palpable to us that the true intent and purpose of the act, in this particular, were to impose upon the consciences of the jury the finding in their verdict (not therefrom to be inferred or conjectured) the degree of the crime; and when that part of the act is considered which refers to the case of the accused making, in open court, a confession of guilt, it seems to us next to impossible that, on reflection, there should be any doubt in the mind of any one as to the proper interpretation of it. In the case of the confession by the prisoner, it is the duty of the judge to examine witnesses, with the view of determining the degree of the crime, the commission of which is confessed. Most certainly the accused's own confession of 'guilty' ought to be equally as strong against him as the finding of the jury of 'guilty,' and yet it does not dispense with the examination to fix the degree. To state the point is, in our judgment, to resolve the question involved in it. In the eye of the law, there has been no valid and sufficient verdict; and, as a consequence, there must be a new trial.'

In the case of McCauley v. U.S., decided in 1846 by the territorial supreme court of Iowa, (1 Morris, [Iowa,] 486,) the defendant, on a trial for murder, after all the testimony on the part of the prosecution had been adduced before the court and jury, withdrew his plea of not guilty, and pleaded guilty to the indictment, and was thereupon sentenced to be hung. The court, per Mason, C.J., in construing a similar statute to ours, says: 'Nothing appears on the record showing that witnesses were examined by the court after he had pleaded guilty, or that the court in any manner decided whether the offense were murder or manslaughter, as contemplated by the statute. Had the trial before the jury proceeded, and a general verdict of guilty alone been rendered, it would have been clearly defective. The general plea of guilty stands in the place of such a general verdict and was so intended by the legislature. The law seems to regard manslaughter as a species of murder. On an indictment for the higher offense, a conviction may take place for the lower. Neither a general verdict nor a general plea of guilty is permitted where murder alone is charged in the indictment, but an inquiry and decision...