Jenkins v. State

• Decision Date: 27 March 1893
• Parties: JENKINS v. STATE.
• Court: Florida Supreme Court

12 So. 677

31 Fla. 196

JENKINS v. STATE.

Florida Supreme Court

March 27, 1893

Error to circuit court, Leon county; John W. Malone, Judge.

Israel Jenkins was convicted of maliciously burning a mill in the nighttime, and brings error. Affirmed.

Syllabus by the Court

SYLLABUS

1. In all such matters as the granting of applications to pass the trial of causes when called for trial, or to temporarily postpone the trial thereof in order to give counsel time to prepare papers to be filed therein, or, during the trial, to have the testimony adduced with sufficient slowness so that it can be written down in extenso, a large discretion must of necessity be reposed in the trial judge, and an appellate court cannot declare any given exercise of such discretion to be error, unless the record discloses a palpable abuse thereof.

2. In testing the qualification of jurors on the voir dire it is not a proper field of inquiry to interrogate the proposed juror as to the comparative credence that he would or could give to the evidence of persons belonging to different races who may or may not be witnesses in the cause.

3. An accomplice is a competent witness against his confederates in the crime, and a conviction may be had upon his uncorroborated evidence where it satisfies the jury beyond a reasonable doubt.

COUNSEL

Stephen C. Miller, for plaintiff in error.

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

OPINION

TAYLOR J.

Israel Jenkins, the plaintiff in error, was indicted at the fall term, 1892, of the circuit court of Leon county for willfully and maliciously burning a mill in the nighttime of the 14th day of October, 1892. He was tried at the same term of the court, convicted, and brings his case here by writ of error.

The first error assigned is the refusal of the court below, when the case was called for trial, to pass the trial thereof, in order to give the defendant's counsel time to write out an affidavit showing the defendant's insolvency, so that, under the statute, he might have an absent witness subpoenaed at the cost of the state. It appears from the record that several days had elapsed between the finding of the indictment and the day upon which the trial was gone into, and no sufficient reason is shown in the record why this affidavit, for the preparation of which time was desired, could not have been prepared before. In all such matters affecting the passing or temporary postponement of the trial of causes a large discretion must necessarily be lodged in the trial judge; and we, in reviewing the exercise of this discretion, cannot declare the refusal of the trial court to grant time to counsel to prepare papers in the cause, or to temporarily postpone the trial of the cause in order to obtain absent witnesses, to be error, unless the record discloses a palpable abuse of such discretion. No such abuse of judicial discretion is exhibited here, and we must therefore say that there was no error in the ruling assigned as such.

The second error assigned is the ruling of the court below in holding a juror to be competent, who, on the voir dire, made the following answer to the following question: 'Question. Is your mind in such a state that you would or could give the evidence of an Ethiopian or descendant of the African race the same weight that you would that of a Caucasian or descendant of the white race, in rendering a verdict upon this case? Answer. No; I don't think I could.'

This question was not at all a proper one to be put to a juror on the voir dire, as it did not seek or tend to demonstrate the juror's bias for or prejudice against the prisoner, but was an effort to make the juror, in advance of the production of evidence in the cause, disclose what class of witnesses he would or would not give credence to,--a field of inquiry that is not proper to be gone into in testing the qualification of jurors on the voir dire. To illustrate its impropriety: Suppose the prisoner's counsel had put this question to the juror: 'John Doe, who is a white man, and Richard Roe, who is a colored man, will be witnesses in this case. Richard Roe, the colored man, will be the defendant's witness; Doe will be the witness against him. Will you, or can you, give as much credence or weight to Roe's evidence as to that of Doe in rendering your verdict? ' Should the juror answer that Doe's would weigh the strongest with him, it would not demonstrate any element of incompetency, bias, or prejudice in the juror as such to sit in judgment on the prisoner's case, but such an answer from the juror would only demonstrate the ill fortune of the prisoner in having Roe for a witness, or rather in not having some one else as a witness more credible than Roe. If the juror's want of faith in the credibility of the evidence of descendants of the African race was attributable to race prejudice, there is still nothing in the record to show that he was incompetent to sit as a juror on the prisoner's case, because there was nothing to disclose, at the time of the juror's examination on the voir dire, to what class the prisoner's witnesses, if he had any, belonged, whether to the white or to the African race. We are cited to the case of Pinder v. State, 27 Fla. 370, 8 South. Rep. 837, as supportive of this assignment. In that case the question to the juror on the voir dire was: 'Could you give the defendant, who is a negro, as fair and impartial a trial as you could a white man, and give him the same advantage and protection as you could a white man upon the same evidence?' There is no parallelity whatever between the two questions. The one quoted from the Pinder Case sought to find out from the proposed juror whether he could give the negro prisoner the same consideration on the same evidence as he would give to a white man. In the case at bar the question proposed left the prisoner out of consideration altogether, and sought to test in advance the proposed juror's and sought to test faith in the evidence of witnesses belonging to two different races, who might or might not testify therein, and of whom it was impossible, at that stage of the proceedings, to say that either of the two classes would actually be witnesses in the cause.

The third assignment of error is that the court erred in refusing to allow the defendant's attorney time to write out the evidence in longhand as it was given in at the trial. There was no error in this. The regulation of all such matters involved in the practical conduct of the trial of causes of necessity is to be left largely to the discretion of the trial court, to be governed by the importance of the issues, the volume, character, and import of the evidence desired to be preserved by transcription. There is nothing to show that the defendant was damnified in any way in consequence of the failure of the court to delay the progress of the trial in order to have the evidence written out at length. On the contrary, the defendant has presented us in the record with a bill of exceptions containing a very voluminous and certifiedly accurate statement of the evidence adduced at the trial, notwithstanding the fact that his counsel were not granted extra time pending the trial to write it out in extenso.

The fourth assignment of error is that the court ruled incorrectly in addmitting a certain memorandum book in evidence of the state's witness R. L. Humphries, who was the superintendent or foreman of the mill that was burned, in which book he kept a memorandum of the different owners, and the marks and weights of baled cotton contained in the mill...