State v. Crane

• Decision Date: 03 May 1892
• Citation: 110 N.C. 530,15 S.E. 231
• Court: North Carolina Supreme Court
• Parties: State v. Crane.

15 S.E. 231

110 N.C. 530

State

v.Crane.

Supreme Court of North Carolina.

May 3, 1892.

Criminal Law—Instructions — Impeachment or Witness.

1. An instruction that certain evidence was to to disregarded by the jury cures its erroneous admission.

2. 'Where defendant, as a witness, denies that he made a statement to a third person, the latter may repeat it in contradiction.

3. It is incorrect to charge that all of the various facts and circumstances relied on to prove a fact must be proved beyond a reasonable doubt.

4. A verdict need not be set aside because a juror has been spoken to by a witness, where the trial court finds that the juror had not thereby been influenced.

Avert, J., dissenting.

Appeal from superior court, Union county; Hoke, Judge.

F. S. Crane was indicted for fornication and adultery, and convicted. He appeals. Affirmed.

D. A. Covington and Batchelor & Devereux, for appellant.

The Attorney General, for the State.

Clark, J. As to the first exception, it is unnecessary to discuss whether the question was incompetent; for, if that be conceded, the error, if any, was cured by the explicit instruction to the jury at the time, and again in the charge, that the recital of facts in the question was not admitted as evidence, and was not to be considered as such by the jury. State v. Collins, 93 N. C. 564; Bridgers v. Dill, 97 N. C. 222, 1 S. E. Rep. 767; State v. Eller, 104 N. C. 853, 10 S. E. Rep. 313; Blake v. Broughton, 107 N. C. 220, 12 S. E. Rep. 127.

In State v. Collins, supra, the defendants were indicted for the larceny of some hams. The confession of one of the defendants was erroneously received in evidence against the other. After one of defendants' counsel had spoken, and when the solicitor was addressing the jury, the judge withdrew from the jury the confession; and it was held that this cured the error. The point is well considered by Ashe, J., who cites with approval the older cases: State v. May, 15N. C. 328; State v. Davis, Id. 612; and McAllister v. McAllister, 34 N. C. 184. Indeed, our authorities are uniform on this matter. If juries should be deemed incompetent to comprehend or unable to obey so plain a direction as that a paper read in their hearing is "not to be considered as evidence, and that it had only been admitted to make the defendant's reply to it [when read to him] intelligible, "—if so low an estimate should be placed upon juries, —then the jury system is a failure, and should have no place in our jurisprudence. If unable to comprehend this, why so often contention whether instructions, frequently more or less abstruse, should be given to the jury? But such a view is an unjust one. Juries are an essential part of the judicial system among every English-speaking people; and, while not perfect, the experience of ages and the observation of the present are that they perform fairly well their part. Certainly, no better substitute has ever been found. To underrate the intelligence of 12 honest, impartial men, who try the questions of fact submitted to them, is a mistake. When aided by a just and intelligent judge, their verdicts are very generally correct. Jurors are not expected to possess legal training. Their province is not to pass on questions of law. But their grasp of the facts is usually. just and accurate; and probably not a court passes that upon the jury there are not men of equal mental capacity with the judge who presides, or the counsel who addresses them. Jurors are not in their nonage, and it is not just to underrate their intelligence. This court has heretofore said as much in State v. Jacobs, 106 N. C. 695, 10 S. E. Rep. 1031.

The second exception, is without merit. The jury were entitled to the benefit of the quasi admission, and the language of the witness was necessarily given as a part of the conversation.

The third exception is equally without merit. The defendant, who was a witness in his own behalf, denied on his examination that he had stated to one Rodgers that his wife had left him in February or March, 1890, because she said he wished to sleep with her daughters, and said his wife had never charged him with it, nor referred to it. He had also testified that...