State v. Lee

• Decision Date: 25 March 1912
• Docket Number: 19,193
• Citation: 130 La. 477,58 So. 155
• Court: Louisiana Supreme Court
• Parties: STATE v. LEE

58 So. 155

130 La. 477

STATE v. LEE

No. 19,193

Supreme Court of Louisiana

March 25, 1912

Appeal from Fourteenth Judicial District Court, Parish of Avoyelles G. H. Couvillon, Judge.

Mack Lee was convicted of murder, and he appeals. Reversed and remanded.

See also, 127 La. 1077, 54 So. 356.

J. C Cappel, for appellant.

Walter Guion, Atty. Gen., and S. Allen Bordelon, Dist. Atty. (G. A Gondran, of counsel), for the State.

OPINION

PROVOSTY, J.

The accused, having been convicted of murder, was sentenced to be hanged.

His application for a continuance on the ground of the absence of a material witness was refused, on the ground that, knowing that the witness did not reside in the parish, he failed to make oath to the materiality of the testimony of the witness and obtain an order of court, as required by section 1036, R. S. The ruling was correct.

Another bill of exceptions is to the refusal to allow a witness to testify to what had been told her by other persons concerning a difficulty, said to have taken place on the day before the killing. The ruling was correct.

After having elicited, on cross-examination of a witness for the state, a part of a conversation had between himself and the witness, the accused objected to the witness relating the whole conversation. The court properly overruled the objection.

The court properly excluded testimony to prove that --

it was currently rumored in the neighborhood at the time of the homicide that the killing occurred over a row between the accused and the deceased on account of a woman."

And also testimony to prove why a posse of white men, who, after the homicide, had gathered at a store of the neighborhood to search for the accused, had abandoned the search and disbanded.

The next bill is short, and can be more briefly disposed of by transcribing it in full, as it speaks for itself. It reads as follows:

"Be it remembered that on the trial of this cause, on the 22d day of November, 1911, the district attorney, in his argument to the jury, used the following language:

"'That the brother of the deceased, a white man, was present at the trial, had come from the state of Alabama, was from a good family, and his people expected a verdict at the hands of the jury; that if the jury were not to convict this man it will be giving a license to every negro to kill any white man on any pretext, and without excuse.' To all of which...