Harrison v. State

• Court: Florida Supreme Court
• Writing for the Court: DAVIS, Chief Justice.
• Citation: Harrison v. State, 110 Fla. 420, 148 So. 882 (Fla. 1933)
• Decision Date: 06 June 1933
• Parties: HARRISON v. STATE.

148 So. 882

110 Fla. 420

HARRISON v. STATE.

Florida Supreme Court, Division A.

June 6, 1933

Error to Circuit Court, Bay County; Ira A. Hutchinson, Judge.

Walter E. Harrison was convicted of first degree murder, and he brings error.

Affirmed.

COUNSEL W.W. Flournoy, of De Funiak Springs, for plaintiff in error.

Cary D Landis, Atty. Gen., and Roy Campbell, Asst. Atty. Gen., for the State.

OPINION

DAVIS Chief Justice.

Walter E. Harrison, a boy 17 years of age, was indicted, tried, and convicted of murder in the first degree with recommendation to mercy of the court, and sentenced therefor to imprisonment in the penitentiary for life. On writ of error he questions the validity of his conviction principally on the ground that the court below erred in the admission in evidence of an alleged confession made by him shortly after he was incarcerated in the county jail on suspicion of having perpetrated the assassination from ambush of one Walter W Sharpless whose dead body had been found on the highway where it was apparent that he had been shot to death by a concealed assassin lying in wait for him.

In Bates v. State, 78 Fla. 672, 84 So. 373, 376, a "confession" was defined by this court as "an admission of guilt" and not "an admission of a fact or circumstance from which guilt may be inferred." In our recent case of Palmer v. State (Fla.) 145 So 69, we said that, while an acknowledgment of subordinate facts not directly involving guilt or not essential to the crime charged was not in legal contemplation a "confession," it was the safer and better practice in dealing with the admissibility in evidence on the trial of the accused of alleged statements and acts of the defendant in the nature of purported "confessions" on his part, for the trial judge to treat the purported admissions or statements as being admissible only under the rule governing admission of pure "confessions" by requiring the rule as to admission of "confessions" to be complied with, even in cases where the tendered evidence apparently disclosed only admissions of subordinate facts falling within the less stringent rule.

Much of the testimony objected to in the present case involved only proof of underlying subordinate facts from which guilt could be inferred, although there was included in the evidence given by the officers against the accused an alleged "confession" as well.

The trial judge treated all that was testified to regarding statements of the accused while in custody as being a part of the accused's alleged "confession" of guilt of the crime charged, and required the state to establish the admissibility of its evidence in accordance with the rule concerning "confessions" as laid down in Bates v State, supra. After expressly finding as a fact that the preliminary evidence offered by the state and the defendant showed beyond a reasonable doubt "that the statements made were voluntarily and freely made by the defendant," same were admitted in evidence and were allowed to go to the jury.

Whether admissions showing guilt, or confessions, are freely and voluntarily made, is a question of admissibility of evidence for the court, and the duty is imposed upon the judge to determine this question as a preliminary matter before permitting any proof or reference to the alleged confessions or admissions of guilt of the accused to go to the jury. This rule has been construed to mean that, where the admissibility of the alleged confession or admissions is challenged, the question of admissibility should be preliminarily determined by the trial judge, in the absence of the jury, after full hearing by him of all the evidence which may be offered on each side respecting the manner in which the confession or admission so...