Lee v. State
| Decision Date | 12 August 1926 |
| Citation | 92 Fla. 645,109 So. 634 |
| Parties | LEE v. STATE. |
| Court | Florida Supreme Court |
Error to Circuit Court, Calhoun County; Amos Lewis, Judge.
Mary Lee was convicted of first degree murder, and she brings error.
Reversed.
See also, 109 So. 634.
Where term of court to which grand jury was drawn has been adjourned without day, without special order adjourning or recessing to future day, grand jury after being discharged cannot be again summoned to attend at special term thereafter called. When a grand jury has been discharged, and the term of court to which its members had been regularly drawn and summoned, and impaneled, and served as a grand jury, has been adjourned without day, no special order having been made adjourning or recessing said court to any future day, such grand jury cannot be again summoned to attend and function at a special term of such court thereafter called by the circuit judge.
Carter & Solomon, of Marianna, for plaintiff in error.
J. B Johnson, Atty. Gen., and Roy Campbell, Asst. Atty. Gen., for the State.
The plaintiff in error, defendant in the court below, was indicted, tried, and convicted, at and during a certain special term of the circuit court for Calhoun county, for murder in the first degree, and given a life sentence.
The defendant interposed a plea in abatement showing the following facts: That after the grand jury had been discharged, and the fall term of circuit court for Calhoun county had on October 8, 1925, been adjourned, sine die, the circuit judge, on October 17, 1925, made an order calling a special term of said court to begin October 27 1925, and directing therein 'that the same grand jurors as composed the grand jury at the last fall term of said Calhoun circuit court shall reconvene and serve as a grand jury at said special term' and ordered the clerk to issue the venire, and the sheriff to summon them. This was done; the special term was convened on October 27, 1925; the members of the former grand jury thus summoned were resworn and recharged, and that it was this grand jury that returned the indictment to which the defendant was called on to plead. That no order was made during said fall term of circuit court adjourning or recessing said court to any future day. That in the interim between said regular and special terms, a regular term had been held in another county in the circuit.
To this plea the state demurred, which demurrer was sustained by the court.
The demurrer should have been overruled, as the plea in abatement was legally sufficient. Section 5955, Revised General Statutes of 1920...
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Lee v. State
...County; Amos Lewis, Judge. Mary Lee was convicted of manslaughter, and she brings error. Reversed, and a new trial awarded. See, also, 109 So. 634. C.J., and Buford, J., dissenting. Syllabus by the Court SYLLABUS Corpus delicti may be proven by circumstances as well as by direct evidence. I......