Scott v. State
| Decision Date | 08 October 1902 |
| Citation | 71 S.W. 824,109 Tenn. 390 |
| Parties | SCOTT et al. v. STATE. |
| Court | Tennessee Supreme Court |
Appeal from circuit court, Hamilton county; Floyd Estill, Judge.
J. W Scott and another were convicted of contempt of court, and they appeal. Reversed.
Joe. V Williams and Shepherd & Frierson, for appellants.
Charles T. Cates, Jr., Atty. Gen., for the State.
The defendants were tried in the court below upon a charge of contempt of court. The charge, in substance, was that one Charley Johnson had been subp naed by the state to appear and give his testimony before the grand jury in the case of the state against Ed Royston, who had been bound over on a charge of forgery; that the defendants, knowing the said Charley Johnson had been so subp naed, decoyed him out of the state of Tennessee, and into the state of Alabama, with the purpose of preventing his appearing as a witness in the said case. The defense made was that the said Charley Johnson had not been lawfully subp naed as a witness in the case referred to and thereunder were the following specifications: (1) That the subp na alleged to have been issued appears, from the face of the affidavit which is the foundation of the present proceeding, to have required the said Charley Johnson to appear before the grand jury, and not before the court to give evidence before the grand jury; (2) that the affidavit shows that the subp na was issued in vacation, without showing that it was issued upon the request of the attorney general of the district; (3) that the affidavit shows that the subp na required Charley Johnson to appear upon the second day of the term, and not upon the first day; (4) that it does not appear that any subp na was ever issued at all; (5) it does not appear that any subp na, if issued, was legally served. Leaving out of view these technical defenses, the testimony clearly shows that the defendants are guilty, that they supposed the subp na was in every respect a legal one, and that under that belief they decoyed the witness out of the state. Under such a state of facts the court is not inclined to give technical objections any more weight than they are entitled to strictissimi juris.
As to the first, second, third, and fifth grounds, whatever weight they might be entitled to if relied upon by a witness who was being proceeded against for a failure to attend, we think they should be given no weight at all when put forward as defenses by persons under prosecution for decoying the witness away, when it appears, as in the present case, that the witness himself recognized the binding force of the subp na. The fourth ground, however, must be sustained, because instead of setting out the subp na in the case of the state against Ed Royston, the bill of exceptions contains a subp na in the present case, and one, moreover, not for Charley Johnson, but for one Charley Hardy. The language of the bill of exceptions, referring in terms to the proper subp na, however, convinces us that the one now appearing in the record was inserted by a mistake of the clerk of the court below. Nevertheless, the judgment of that court must be reversed on this ground; because, if in fact no subp na for Charley Johnson was ever issued, he could not be made a legal witness, and so bound to appear (Hatfield's Case, 3 Head, 233); and the defendants, in that view, committed no contempt of court in inducing him to leave this state and go...
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...contempt. Black v. Blount, 938 S.W.2d at 397. As a result, the courts' contempt power is now purely statutory. Scott v. State, 109 Tenn. 390, 394-95, 71 S.W. 824, 825 (1902); State v. Galloway, 45 Tenn. at 328-31; State ex rel. Flowers v. Tenn. Trucking Ass'n Self Ins. Group Trust, 209 S.W.......
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