Larmon v. State

Decision Date16 April 1921
Citation88 So. 471,81 Fla. 553
PartiesLARMON v. STATE.
CourtFlorida Supreme Court

Error to Circuit Court, Leon County; E. C. Love, Judge.

Bernice E. Larmon was convicted of murder in the second degree, and he brings error.

Affirmed.

Syllabus by the Court

SYLLABUS

Skull of deceased held admissible to show course of bullet automobile in which deceased and defendant were riding held admissible. In a trial for murder by means of a bullet fired through the head of the deceased, the skull of the deceased when identified, is admissible in evidence when it furnishes an ocular demonstration to the jury of the places of entrance and exit and course of the bullet that produced the death and illustrates and corroborates the evidence of the surgeon who conducted the post mortem examination of the deceased. The automobile in which the deceased and the defendant were riding at the time of the homicide, when sufficiently identified, is also admissible in evidence for similar reasons to the admissibility of the skull, when by a bullet hole in its top and blood stains on its cushions it tends to illustrate the course of the bullet after it passed through the skull of the deceased and the relative positions of the parties at the time of the killing.

Erroneous instruction confined to acquitted codefendant not available on error to convicted codefendant. A charge by the court that is specifically and expressly applied and confined by name to one of two codefendants who is acquitted cannot avail on writ of error the other codefendant who is convicted, even though such charge be erroneous.

Conviction for murder in second degree not disturbed if evidence justified conviction in first degree. A verdict convicting of murder in the second degree will not be set aside on the ground that the evidence does not make out that degree of the crime in terms as defined by the statute, if the evidence in the case would have supported a finding of murder in the first degree.

COUNSEL

Myers & Myers and W. C. Hodges, all of Tallahassee, for plaintiff in error.

Rivers H. Buford, Atty. Gen., and J. B. Gaines, Asst. Atty. Gen., for the State.

OPINION

TAYLOR J.

The plaintiff in error, hereinafter referred to as the defendant, together with his wife, Margaret Larmon, were indicted by the grand jury in the circuit court for Leon county for murder in the first degree of one Ralph H. Rushing. He was tried and convicted on the 7th day of July, 1920, of murder in the second degree, and sentenced to life imprisonment in the penitentiary; his dodefendant, Margaret Larmon, being acquitted.

He brings this judgment here for review by writ of error.

It is admitted that the deceased, Rushing, came to his death from a pistol ball of large caliber fired through his head; the ball entering to the right of the middle line of the skull behind the right ear, ranging upward and to the left, and coming out through the eye socket of the left eye, and passing through the left hand top corner of the top of the automobile in which the deceased was sitting at the time he was shot.

The first, second, and third assignments of error, argued here, complain of the admission in evidence, over the defendant's objection, of the skull of the deceased. The objections argued to its admission are that the facts sought to be elicited by its introduction in evidence could be shown by other and competent testimony, and that said skull, being a gruesome and repulsive object, would tend to improperly influence the jury in arriving at their verdict; and (2) that the skull was not shown to be in the same condition at the time of its proffer in evidence as it was when severed from the body of the deceased.

There was no error in the admission of the skull in evidence. It was fully identified by a skilled physician and surgeon who amputated it from the body of the deceased, and who testified that it had been kept in his possession ever since. It was substantially in the same condition as when it came from the body, except that a small piece of bone that had been torn loose from its place at the exit of the ball had dropped out after the tissues holding it in place had dried up and deteriorated by time, but this piece of bone was there at the trial, so that the jury could see it and the place in the skull from which it had dropped. The skull...

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12 cases
  • State v. Sing
    • United States
    • Idaho Supreme Court
    • July 1, 1922
    ... ... 387, 207 S.W. 774; ... Watson v. State, 84 Tex. Cr. 115, 205 S.W. 662; ... Terry v. State, 203 Ala. 99, 82 So. 113; People ... v. Wolff, 182 Cal. 728, 190 P. 22; Sizemore v ... Commonwealth, 189 Ky. 46, 224 S.W. 637; Locklear v ... State, 17 Ala. App. 597, 87 So. 708; Larmon v. State ... (Fla.), 88 So. 471; State v. McKnight, 21 N.M ... 14, 153 P. 76; McKinney v. State, 80 Tex. Cr. 31, ... 187 S.W. 960; Blazka v. State, 105 Neb. 13, 178 N.W. 832.) ... Instructions ... must be read as a whole. ( Kennon v. Gilmer, 5 Mont ... 257, 51 Am. Rep. 45, 5 ... ...
  • State v. Enoch, COA17-1248
    • United States
    • North Carolina Court of Appeals
    • September 18, 2018
    ...1994) (reh'g denied April 4, 1994); type and location of injury and to corroborate expert testimony, see e.g. , Larmon v. State , 81 Fla. 553, 555, 88 So. 471, 471 (1921) ; and condition of the skull, see e.g. , Texas & P. Ry. Co. v. Williams , 200 S.W. 1149, 1151 ...
  • Hickson v. State
    • United States
    • Mississippi Supreme Court
    • June 5, 1985
    ...v. State, 175 Miss. 631, 651-52, 167 So. 68, 72 (1936) (body parts admitted to prove death of homicide victim); Larmon v. State, 81 Fla. 553, 555, 88 So. 471, 471-72 (1921) (skull admissible to illustrate course of bullet and consequent nature of killing); Self v. State, 90 Miss. 58, 63, 43......
  • DeLaine v. State
    • United States
    • Florida District Court of Appeals
    • January 9, 1970
    ...Derry case. Nor did they have a gruesome quality or appearance, such as the clothes displayed in the Deeb case. See also Larmon v. State, 1921, 81 Fla. 553, 88 So. 471; Cruce v. State, 1924, 87 Fla. 406, 100 So. 264, and Browne v. State, 1926, 92 Fla. 699, 109 So. We find no harmful error r......
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