People v. Bemis
| Decision Date | 10 October 1883 |
| Citation | 51 Mich. 422,16 N.W. 794 |
| Court | Michigan Supreme Court |
| Parties | PEOPLE v. BEMIS. |
Counsel to assist the prosecuting attorney in a particular prosecution may properly be employed by the board of supervisors, with the sanction of the circuit court and the approval of the prosecuting attorney.
The prosecuting attorney is a quasi judicial officer, and he and any one associated with him represent public justice exclusively, and stand indifferent as between the accused and any private interest.
An information charging that the accused, at a time and place stated, "feloniously, willfully, and of her malice aforethought, did kill and murder," etc., without stating the means by which the murder was done, is sufficient, under the statutory system of procedure in Michigan, as the information is based on a full examination into the facts on a complaint before a justice, and this examination, unless waived, is returned into the circuit court, where the respondent can avail himself of it to restrict the trial to the matters on which he has been examined.
A woman was prosecuted for killing her son-in-law with strychnine and it was the theory of the prosecution that the victim's wife was accessory to the crime. Held, that it was not error to admit evidence that on the night after his death the two women slept together, and were heard whispering a long time after retiring.
It is not clearly error, in a murder case, to admit evidence of ill-feeling between the accused and the victim, extending back two years before his death, though such a showing would be certainly remote.
Entry of judgment in a murder case may properly be amended a month after it was made, to show that the verdict was for murder in the first degree, and to give the sentence correctly.
Error to Ionia.
J.J. Van Riper, for plaintiff.
Blanchard & Cagwin, for defendant and appellant.
The respondent stands convicted of the murder of one Will. Henderson. The information is very general, and charges that respondent On the trial V.H Smith, Esq., appeared as counsel with the prosecuting attorney, and this being objected to by the defense, his authority was inquired into, and it appeared that he had been employed by a committee of the board of supervisors, subsequently sanctioned by the circuit court, with the approval of the prosecuting attorney. The court thereupon overruled the objection. The ruling was correct. We have held that the office of prosecuting attorney was quasi judicial, and that he and any one associated with him must be exclusively the representative of public justice, and stand indifferent as between the accused party and any private interest. Meister v. People, 31 Mich. 99; Sneed v. People, 38 Mich. 248; People v. Hurst, 41 Mich. 328; [S.C. 1 N.W. 133.] But Mr. Smith's position does not appear to have been available. He was not employed by any private interest, or any interest hostile to the prisoner, and there was no showing that he had or was likely to have any feeling or desire that would lead him to seek an unjust conviction. The board of supervisors to some extent represents the people in criminal matters, and the power to determine the compensation of counsel employed to aid the prosecution is vested in that board. It was not improper, therefore, for the board to have a voice in the selection of counsel, or that, with the approval of the prosecuting officer, they should make all the arrangements. It is not to be assumed that counsel of their selection will be subject to improper influences.
Objection was made to the introduction of any evidence under the...
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