Holton v. State

• Decision Date: 14 November 1911
• Citation: 72 S.E. 949,137 Ga. 86
• Parties: HOLTON v. STATE.
• Court: Georgia Supreme Court

72 S.E. 949

137 Ga. 86

HOLTON v. STATE.

Supreme Court of Georgia

November 14, 1911

Syllabus by the Court.

Upon the trial of the accused, charged with murder, after the jury of 12 had qualified upon their voir dire, and had been accepted by the state and the accused, and sent to their room, and before being sworn in chief, the solicitor general stated to the court that he desired to put upon trial, as to his competency, one of such jurors, for the reason that the juror had expressed a decided bias as to the case, in that he had made the statement that "it ought to be narrated all over the county that the defendant ought to be turned loose and if he got on the jury he would do it." The solicitor further stated to the court that the alleged disqualification of the juror had come to his knowledge since the juror was accepted, and that no one interested in behalf of the state had any knowledge of such alleged disqualification until after the juror had been accepted. After the introduction of evidence in behalf of the state, before the court as a trior on the question as to the juror's disqualification, and after the juror's statement to the court on the subject the court found the juror to be qualified, and he served in the trial of the case, and a verdict of guilty was rendered. Held, that the court did not err in allowing such investigation as to the competency of the juror. Penal Code 1910, § 1004; Eberhart v. State, 47 Ga. 598 (3).

One of the grounds of the motion for a new trial was: "Because on the trial of the case, while [a named person], a witness for the defendant, was on cross-examination by the solicitor general, said witness having testified that in his opinion the defendant on trial, at the time he killed the deceased was insane, the court erred in ruling out, upon the objection of the solicitor general that the same was irrelevant and immaterial, the following answer of the witness: 'About this insult to his wife --.' This witness at the time being cross-examined as to his reasons for basing the option [opinion] that the defendant at the time of the homicide was insane." This ground does not sufficiently specify any point for determination.

A ground of a motion for new trial, based upon the refusal of the court to permit a given question to be asked by a party of his own witness, furnishes no reason for a new trial where it does not appear what answer was expected to the question. Southern Railway Co. v. Cunningham, 123 Ga. 90, 50 S.E. 979; Morris v. State, 129 Ga. 434 59 S.E. 223.

Upon the trial of one accused of murder, who, in his statement to the jury, admitted committing the homicide, and nothing was set up by way of justification or mitigation, other than that the person killed, several years prior to the homicide, had grossly insulted the wife of the accused, and that the accused was insane at the time of the homicide, it was not error for the court to refuse, upon written request of counsel for the accused, to give in charge to the jury the provisions of Penal Code 1910, §§ 70, 72, 74, 75, relating, respectively, to justifiable homicide, killing in defense of property or habitation, mutual protection by parents and children, and all other instances standing upon the same footing of reason and justice.

(a) Nor did the court, under the evidence in this case and the statement of the accused, and in view of the defenses set up err in refusing to give, upon the written request of counsel for the accused, the following instruction to the jury: "I charge you that the section of the Code which I have just read you, to wit, that which provides that 'all other instances which stand upon the same footing of reason and justice as those enumerated shall be justifiable homicide,' refers to those instances which I have given you under the head of 'justifiable homicide,' killing in defense, or defense of habitation or property, or killing another under the fears of a reasonable man, or killing in his own defense, and that the jury, who, as I have explained previously to you, being the judges of both the law and the evidence in this case, are clothed with large discretionary powers over that class of offenses, where the...