State v. Holland

• Citation: 120 La. 429,45 So. 380
• Decision Date: 16 December 1907
• Docket Number: 16,782
• Court: Supreme Court of Louisiana
• Parties: STATE v. HOLLAND

45 So. 380

120 La. 429

STATE v. HOLLAND

No. 16,782

Supreme Court of Louisiana

December 16, 1907

Appeal from Twelfth Judicial District Court, Parish of De Soto; John Bachman Lee, Judge.

E. D Holland was convicted of kidnapping, and appeals. Reversed and remanded.

William Crosby Pegues and Hall & Jack, for appellant.

Walter Guion, Atty. Gen., and James Wilson Parsons, Dist. Atty (Lewis Guion, of counsel), for the State.

LAND J. BREAUX, C.J. and MONROE, J., dissent.

OPINION

LAND J.

E. D. Holland, as principal, and Jim McDow, as accessory before the fact, were indicted for the offense commonly called "kidnapping," as denounced by section 805 of the Revised Statutes. McDow was acquitted, but Holland was convicted, and was sentenced to imprisonment in the penitentiary for the term of three years. He has appealed, and relies for reversal on one bill of exceptions and errors assigned as patent on the face of the record.

We will first consider the bill of exceptions, to which is attached the testimony of a number of witnesses and the objections of the defendant made at the time. Defendant was charged with "kidnapping" one Gertie Turner, and conveying her from the depot of the Kansas City Southern Railroad Company in the town of Mansfield to the sawmill of T. B. Herndon.

Over the objections of the defendant the state was permitted to introduce evidence tending to prove that the defendant, Holland, and Gertie Turner had lived together for about 10 years as man and wife; that in March, 1907, the accused hired a deputy sheriff to arrest the said Gertie Turner at Noble, La., without a warrant; that said officer delivered her to the accused, who carried her to Shreveport, and thence to Roberson, La., where they lived together for several days; that Gertie Turner again deserted the accused, and went to live with a man named Watts; that the accused caused the said Gertie and her paramour, Watts, to be arrested without a warrant, at Kingston, La., and incarcerated in the parish jail, and subsequently made affidavits charging the woman with larceny and the man with larceny and selling intoxicating liquor without a license; that the parties so jailed were released by order of the magistrate at the end of two days -- all of which preceded the kidnapping charged in the indictment to have taken place on August 1, 1907.

To all of which testimony the defendant objected as inadmissible and prejudicial, and more especially as tending to prove a kidnapping and false imprisonment not charged in the indictment, all of which objections were overruled by the trial judge, without any statement of the purpose for which the evidence was offered, and without any assignment of reasons for the ruling of the court. In this court counsel for the state asserts that the evidence was offered to prove the motive and intent of Holland, and to show that the kidnapping charged was against the will and consent of the woman.

Section 805 of the Revised Statutes of 1870 reads as follows:

"Whoever shall forcibly seize and carry out of this state, or from one part of this state to another, or shall imprison or secrete any person without authority of law, and all persons aiding, advising and abetting therein, on conviction, shall be imprisoned at hard labor or otherwise, for a period not exceeding five years, at the discretion of the court."

Under this statute the motive or intent...