State v. Feazell

• Decision Date: 26 February 1906
• Docket Number: 15,922
• Citation: 40 So. 698,116 La. 264
• Court: Louisiana Supreme Court
• Parties: STATE v. FEAZELL

40 So. 698

116 La. 264

STATE v. FEAZELL

No. 15,922

Supreme Court of Louisiana

February 26, 1906

Appeal from Third Judicial District Court, Parish of Bienville James Edward Moore, Judge.

S. N Feazell was convicted of manslaughter, and appeals. Affirmed.

See 38 So. 444, 114 La. 533.

William Chappelle Barnette and Joseph Rush Wimberly (Robert Raymond Reid, of counsel), for appellant.

Walter Guion, Atty. Gen., and James Alexander Dorman, Dist. Atty pro tem. (Price & Roberts and Lewis Guion, of counsel), for the State.

LAND J. PROVOSTY, J., dissents.

OPINION

LAND, J.

The accused was indicted for the crime of manslaughter, tried, found guilty, and sentenced to imprisonment at hard labor in the state penitentiary for the term of four years.

On her appeal the accused relies for reversal of the verdict on several bills of exception, which will be considered in their order.

From the imperfect record before us it appears that the deceased was the husband of the accused, and that the homicide grew out of domestic troubles between the parties, which had culminated in a judgment of separation from bed and board in favor of the wife. It further appears that on the day of the homicide both parties were in the same house and that a violent quarrel arose between them at the breakfast table. The accused had a revolver and shot the deceased twice as he was rising from the table. Denver Feazell, a son of the parties, was present on the occasion in question, and was examined as a witness for the state on the preliminary examination of the accused.

On the trial the accused pleaded self-defense, and Denver Feazell was called to the stand as a witness in her behalf, and only two questions were propounded to him by the counsel for defendant, to wit: "What did your father have in his hand when he was shot?" and "What was he doing?" The witness answered that his father, at the time he was shot, was rising from his chair with a dish in his hand, and saying "I told the truth, the whole truth, and I will kill the damn bitch." This was the statement of the witness as taken down by the court at the time. The statement as given by counsel for defendant is as follows:

"The witness having testified that when his father, the deceased, was shot, that he was rising from the chair with a dish in his hand, in the act of throwing it at defendant, and making the remark that I will kill the damn bitch."

Counsel for the defendant, having elicited this disconnected and fragmentary statement from the witness, consigned him for cross-examination. Whereupon counsel for the state asked the following questions: "How long was your mother out of the room before she came back into the room?" Defendant's counsel objected "for the reason that the witness had been asked no question by the defense touching this matter and that it was not a question touching the credibility of the witness." This objection was properly overruled by the court. The rule invoked by defendant's counsel never went further than to restrain the state from cross-examining a witness on matters not connected with matters stated on the examination in chief. State v. Baker, 43 La.Ann. 1168, 10 So. 256, and authorities there cited. The right of the state to cross-examine on matters pertinent to and growing out of or connected with matters elicited on the examination in chief is settled beyond controversy. State v. Willingham, 33 La.Ann. 538; State v. Stuart, 35 La.Ann. 1015; State v. Poynier, 36 La.Ann. 572; State v. Johnson, 41 La.Ann. 1079, 6 So. 802. The actions of the accused and the deceased at the time of the homicide are so closely connected that no intelligent account of what happened can be given without including both. The testimony in chief of the witness was a garbled statement of the occurrence, and the state had the undoubted right to elicit on cross-examination a full and complete account of the action and conduct of both parties on the occasion of the homicide. The first bill of exception is therefore without merit.

In the per curiam of this bill the judge states that it was developed on the cross-examination of Denver Feazell "that the deceased and defendant were at the breakfast table, that a quarrel arose and became violent, that the accused left the room, and in a short time returned with a pistol in her hand and the shooting followed shortly afterwards." The natural inference from the testimony is that the action of the deceased in rising from his chair, with a dish in his hand, took place after the accused had returned to the room with a pistol in her hand.

The second bill of exception was reversed to the court's ruling out the testimony of the same witness as to a previous assault with a stick alleged to have been made by the deceased on the accused a day or two before the killing.

The judge in his per curiam states in part as follows:

"The testimony of a previous assault by the deceased upon the defendant was excluded, because I did not believe that he had made an assault or committed an overt act before he was shot. The deceased, in his dying statement made to J. F. Tooke, and which was in evidence, had stated he was conveying food to his mouth with a fork at the time he was shot first. The evidence of J. F. Tooke, who was the first to arrive at the scene of shooting, was that the deceased called the defendant into the room shortly after he was shot and asked her in the presence of the witness why she had shot him, and that her answer was, 'Because you made me so mad.' The defendant did not claim that any hostile demonstration had been made toward her, or that she had acted in...