Hall v. The State Of Ga.

• Decision Date: 31 January 1873
• Citation: 48 Ga. 607
• Parties: F. H. Hall, plaintiff in error. vs. The State of Georgia, defendant in error.
• Court: Georgia Supreme Court

48 Ga. 607

F. H. Hall, plaintiff in error. vs. The State of Georgia, defendant in error.

Supreme Court of the State of Georgia

(Atlanta, January Term, 1873.)

Criminal law. Res gestae. Evidence. Before Judge Hopkins. Fulton Superior Court. April Term, 1872.

Hall was placed upon trial for the offense of an assault with intent to commit murder, alleged to have been perpetrated upon the person of one Thomas Cushman, on December 5th, 1871. The indictment also contained a count charging defendant with the offense of shooting at said Cushman, not in his own defense, nor under circumstances of justification. The defendant pleaded not guilty.

During the trial the defendant proposed to prove by Thomas *Newman, the officer who arrested him, as a part of the res gestae, his statements made some ten or twelve minutes after the shooting, on his way to the city guard-house, as to the circumstances under which he received an injury to his arm, which he then and there exhibited.

The Court excluded the evidence, and the defendant excepted.

The jury returned a verdict of guilty on the second count. Whereupon, the defendant moved for a new trial, upon the ground, amongst others, that the Court erred in his exclusion of the testimony of the witness, Newman, as to his statements on the way to the guard-house.

The motion was overruled, and the defendant excepted.

Gartrell & Stephens; T. P. Westmoreland, for plaintiff in error.

John T. Glenn, Solicitor General, for the State.

The time between the shooting and the sayings of the defendant was too long to make it admissible: 27 Georgia, 296; 11 Ibid.; 615. The joinder of the counts was proper: 43 Georgia, 518; 27 Ibid., 723.

McCay, Judge.

The res gestae of a transaction is what is done during the progress of it, or so nearly upon the actual occurrence as fairly to be treated as cotemporaneous with it. No precise point of time can be fixed a priori where the res gestae ends. Each case turns on its own circumstances. Indeed, the inquiry is rather into events than into the precise time which has elapsed. Is the proof offered of a matter fairly a part of the same transaction? Is it an event happening naturally and spontaneously as a part of the occurrence under investigation? If so, the law permits itto be proven as part of it, since the whole scene, as it has transpired, ought to appear to the tribunal called upon to determine its character. Matters occurring before or after, that is, before the transaction begun or *after it...