State v. Green

• Court: United States State Supreme Court of South Carolina
• Writing for the Court: McIVER
• Citation: 26 S.E. 234,48 S.C. 136
• Parties: STATE. v. GREEN.
• Decision Date: 06 January 1897

26 S.E. 234
48 S.C. 136

STATE.
v.
GREEN.

Supreme Court of South Carolina.

Jan. 6, 1897.

Criminal Law—Confessions—Expert Testimony —Witness—Competency—Conviction of Chime — Declarations of Third Persons — Misconduct of Counsel — Instructions—Accomplice Testimony.

1. A confession by accused cannot be proved by testimony that the person to whom the confession was alleged to have been made stated to witness that accused had confessed the crime to him.

2. A physician may give his opinion as to whether a drug is poisonous, based on information acquired from reading standard medical works.

3. Error in the admission of evidence is cured by striking out the evidence.

4. The crime of disposing of crops while under a lien is not a felony, or crimen falsi, so as to render a person convicted thereof incompetent as a witness.

5. Declarations of a person that accused instructed her what testimony she should give is inadmissible.

6. Language of the prosecuting attorney denunciatory of accused is not ground for reversal, where no attempt was made to check the attorney, or ruling asked as to the propriety of the language.

7. Where, in a prosecution for a murder, the character of the homicide is not in issue, the only controversy being as to whether defendants committed the homicide, an instruction reciting the theory of the state as to the circumstances of the killing, and stating that, "if this is true, * * * this crime, in its sickening and horrible details, is without parallel in the history of crime in this state, " and then warning the jury not to allow themselves to be influenced by the indignation the recital of the crime may have aroused in their breasts, is not ground for reversal.

8. A conviction for murder may be based on the testimony of an accomplice alone.

9. An instruction that, if the testimony of a witness is true, defendants are guilty, is erroneous, as an instruction on the facts, where the testimony shows that the witness did not see defendants commit the homicide.

Appeal from general sessions circuit court of Spartanburg county; Earle, Judge.

Edward D. Green was convicted of murder, and appeals. Reversed.

The grounds of appeal were as follows:

(1) Because the circuit judge erred in allowing the witness William Blackwell, on the cross-examination of counsel for the defendant Page, to testify as follows: "Q. How far were you from them when you saw them talking? A. They were some 20 or 30 steps; not more than that. Q. They did not seem to be talking any secret? A. They were rather squatted down, as well as I remember, talking a little. I could only see the movement of their mouths. I did not hear them. 1 suppose they had been talking." Because the circuit judge erred in allowing the wit ness William Blackwell, during the examination of said witness by counsel for the defendant John L. Page, to testify as follows: "He said [meaning Page] he stayed all night there that night, and said that Mr. Green went off, —said he had to go off a little piece, —and he said, 'You stay here until I come back.' He says, 'I don't know what about that, Ed, and you gone.' He says, 'You stay, and I will give you twenty dollars'; and he says, 'I don't know, hardly, about that, and you gone.' He says: 'As far as that is concerned, I could stay without anything, if you want me to stay that bad, ' or something to that amount. And he said that Green went, and said when he got back he was asleep, lying in bed, and he said he woke up; Mr. Green was in the house and spoke to him, and he says: 'Well, ' he says, 'John, I have killed Ban Carson.' And he says: T will give you a hundred dollars to swear that I was here all night; and if you don't swear that, ' he says, 'me and Mrs. Carson will both swear that you were there and hope us.' "

(2) Because the circuit judge erred in permitting the witness H. E. McDowell to testify that he "had read in standard works on medicine" that strychnine is a deadly poison.

(3) Because the circuit judge erred in allowing the witness T. R. Trimmier to testify; the court having ordered, on motion of defendants' counsel, that the witnesses be separated and excluded from the court room during the examination of the witnesses in the trial, and the said T. R. Trimmier was not so excluded, and heard the examination of the other witnesses.

(4) Because the circuit judge erred in allowing the witness Adam W. Ballenger to testify as follows: "Q. What I want to know is what kind of a place is it [referring to plantation of deceased]. Was it a good, bad, or indifferent? A. Well, from what I could see, it appeared to me that it was a pretty fair place, "—the same being incompetent, irrelevant, and absolutely foreign to the issue.

(5) Because the circuit judge erred in allowing the witness Austin Lee to testify, and in allowing his testimony to go to the jury, when the said witness admitted that he had been tried and convicted of disposing of crop under lien, which, it is submitted, is an infamous offense, and his testimony should not be received in a court of justice.

(6) Because the circuit judge erred in allowing the witness Adam W. Ballenger, when recalled by the state, to testify as follows: "Q. Is there anything you omitted to state in your testimony this morning that you wish to state now? A. One thing: Mrs. Carson told me that Mr. Green told her what to testify to—told her what to swear, what to testify to—at the day of the trial up there. She told me the other day that Mr. Green told her what to swear when she went before the squire, "—the same being an attempt to convict Green on statements alleged to have

[26 S.E. 235]

been made to the witness by Mrs. Carson, and tended to poison the minds of the jurors against Green; and that the circuit...