Pinder v. State

• Decision Date: 14 March 1891
• Parties: PINDER v. STATE.
• Court: Florida Supreme Court

8 So. 837

27 Fla. 370

PINDER v. STATE.

Florida Supreme Court

March 14, 1891

Error to circuit court, Clay county; W. B. YOUNG, Judge.

Syllabus by the Court

SYLLABUS

1. The examination of jurors on the voir dire in criminal trials is not to be confined strictly to the questions formulated in section 10, p. 446, McClel Dig., but should be so varied and elaborated as the circumstances surrounding the juror under examination in relation to the case on trial would seem to require, in order to obtain a fair and impartial jury, whose minds are free of all interest, bias, or prejudice.

2. Where the party on trial belongs to the negro race, it is error to refuse the putting of the question to the jurors on the voir dire: '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?' such question being pertinent to test fully the existence of bias or prejudice.

3. Though there is nothing in the statute to prohibit the court itself from exclusively conducting the examination of jurors on the voir dire, yet the most convenient and better practice, sanctioned by long and almost universal usage, is to allow such examinations to be conducted by the counsel in the cause, the court judiciallly supervising, directing supplementing, or rectifying the same.

4. In capital cases, instructions to the jury should give to the accused the benefit of the theory that the killing must have been unlawful, or without a legally recognized excuse or justification, in order to constitute the crime of murder or manslaughter.

5. When the court undertakes to instruct the jury as to the several degrees of homicide, and the facts that constitute each as defined by statute, it is the correct and better practice in all such cases that he should also give to the jury the circumstances that constitute the exceptions mentioned in the statute wherein the killing is declared to be justifiable or excusable.

6. In a trial for murder it is error for the court to charge the jury that, 'to constitute excusable homicide by reason of the defendant acting in self-defense, it is necessary that the defendant should have perpetrated the act under the 'well-grounded' belief, justified by the surroundings, that it was necessary to take the life of the person slain in order to save his own life,' etc Smith v. State, 25 Fla. 517, 6 South. Rep. 482 cited and approved. All that can be required of the prisoner in such cases would be to show that he was surrounded by such a condition of affairs as made it, from his standpoint reasonable for a cautious and prudent man to believe that it was necessary to fire the fatal shot or strike the fatal blow in order to save himself from death or great bodily harm.

7. Where it is deducible from the evidence that the killing of the deceased by the defendant was wholly unintentional, and accidentally brought about by the excusable or justifiable defense of himself against impending danger from a third party, it is error for the court of charge the jury that, in order to avail himself of the plea of self-defense, 'it is necessary that the defendant should have perpetrated the act under the well-grounded belief, justified by the surroundings, that it was necessary to take the life of the 'person slain' in order to save his own life,' etc.

8. If the killing of the party intended to be killed would, under all the circumstances, have been excusable or justifiable homicide upon the theory of self-defense, then the unintended killing of a by-stander by a random shot, fired in the proper and prudent exercise of such self-defense, is also excusable or justifiable.

9. If the killing of the intended victim in such a case would have been reduced by the circumstances to murder in the second or third degree, or to manslaughter in any of the degrees, then the unintentional and accidental killing of a by-stander, resulting from any act designed to take effect upon the intended victim, would be likewise reduced to the same grade of offense as would have followed the death of the victim intended to be killed.

COUNSEL

S. Y. Finley, for plaintiff in error.

William B. Lamar, Atty. Gen., for defendant in error.

OPINION

TAYLOR, J.

At the spring term, 1890, of the circuit court for Clay county Peter Pinder, the plaintiff in error, was indicted for the murder of one Joseph Tillman, on October 11, 1889, the alleged instrument of death used being a Winchester rifle. At the next ensuing fall term of said circuit court Pinder was tried, convicted, and sentenced to death, and from such conviction and sentence the cause is brought to this court upon writ of error. It appears from the record that when the jury was being impaneled who tried the accused, and when the jurors were being tested upon the voir dire as to their competency, etc., the prisoner's counsel propounded to J. F. Geiger and to other jurors the following question: '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 would a white man upon the same evidence? ' Which question the court below refused to allow to be propounded to the jurors upon their voir dire, and refused to allow counsel in the cause to propound any questions to the jurors upon the voir dire; the court itself insisting upon propounding all questions to the jurors touching their competency, and propounding only such questions to them as are in express terms provided for in section 10, p. 446, McClel. Dig. The refusal of the court below to allow the question quoted above to be propounded to the jurors upon the voir dire is assigned as error, and will be considered first. We think the court erred in refusing to permit this question to be propounded to the jurors. Though the question is not in express terms provided for in the statute above cited, yet it was a pertinent, and, as we think, proper, question to test fully the existence of bias or prejudice in the minds of the jurors. It sought to elicit a fact that was of the most vital import to the defendant; and a fact, too, that, if existent, was locked up entirely within the breasts of the jurors to whom the question was propounded, a knowledge of the existence of which could only be acquired by interrogating the juror himself. The answer to it, if in the affirmative, could have worked no harm to the juror, or to any one else, but would have done credit to the humanity and intelligence of the juror, and would have satisfactorily exhibited to the court and to the defendant his entire competency, so far as the element of bias or prejudice was involved. But, if the answer to it from the jurors had been in the negative, then we have no hesitancy in saying that it would have shown them to be wholly unfit and incompetent to sit upon the trial of a man of the negrorace, whose right to a trial by a fair and impartial jury is as fully guarantied to him under our constitution and laws as to the whitest man in Christendom; and such incompetency asserts itself with superadded force in such a case as this, where the life or death of the defendant was the issue to tip the scale in the jury's hands for adjustment.

The examination of jurors upon their voir dire is not necessarily to be confined strictly to the questions formulated in the said section 10, p. 446, McClel. Dig., but should be so varied and elaborated as the circumstances surrounding the juror under examination in relation to the case on trial would seem to require, in order to obtain in every cause a fair and impartial jury, whose minds were free and clear of all such interest, bias, or prejudice as would seriously tend to militate against the finding of such a verdict as the very right and justice of the cause would in every case demand. The provision of the law above referred to does not so expressly provide, but upon the voir dire it is the universal practice to propound to jurors questions as to their age; whether they are registered voters or not; where they reside; whether there exists any unusual relations of friendship between them and either of the parties litigant in the cause; and we think this practice correct and proper, and, as we think, fully sanctioned by that clause of the section of the statute quoted, which provides for the inquiry in general as to whether the juror 'is otherwise incompetent.' State v. Madoil, 12 Fla. 151; Pierce v. State, 13 N.H. 536; People v. Reyes, 5 Cal. 347; People v. Car Soy, 57 Cal. 102; People v. Christie, 2 Park. Crim. R. 579; Jones v. State, 2 Blackf. 475; Lester v. State, 2 Tex. App. 432; Milan v. State, 24 Ark. 346.

While section 10, p. 446, McClel. Dig., in enumerating the grounds of challenges to jurors for cause, uses the language 'The court shall, on the motion of each party in any suit, examine on oath any person who is called as a juror therein, to know whether he is related to either party,' etc.,--yet there is nothing in the statute that inhibits the conducting of the examination of jurors on the voir dire by the counsel in the cause for the state and for the defense, or that necessarily imposes upon the judge himself the burden of the conduct of such examination. It has been the universal practice in this state, so far as we know, for such examinations to be conducted by the counsel in the cause; the court, of course, judicially supervising and directing the same, and taking part therein either to supplement or rectify. And we think this is the most convenient and better practice, certainly having the sanction of long and almost universal usage. Still there is nothing in the statute to prohibit the court from exclusively...