State v. Meekins
| Decision Date | 01 May 1889 |
| Docket Number | 10,389 |
| Citation | 41 La.Ann. 543,6 So. 822 |
| Court | Louisiana Supreme Court |
| Parties | STATE OF LOUISIANA v. THOMAS MEEKINS |
APPEAL from the Ninth District Court, Parish of Tensas. Young, J.
Walter H. Rogers, Attorney General, for the State, Appellee.
Snyder & Tullis and B. F. Young, for Defendant and Appellant.
An information for burglary having been filed against the defendant, and duly served upon him, he voluntarily appeared through his counsel and before arraignment and filed a plea of autrefois acquit of which he prayed trial by jury. After answer by the State, the court refused the trial by jury, to which exception was taken. The plea was then taken up, tried on evidence offered, and overruled by the court, to which ruling another exception was reserved.
The defendant was then, for the first time, duly arraigned pleaded not guilty, and was regularly tried and convicted.
On this branch of the case, defendant assigns several errors:
1. That the minutes do not show that the prisoner was present in court when the plea of autrefois acquit was filed.
The law undoubtedly requires that the defendant must be present at the arraignment, and that, as a general rule, he must plead personally, and not by attorney.
If this were a case where the defendant had not been present at the arraignment and had not pleaded personally to the information, but had pleaded only by attorney, his claim to relief might have merit. But, as we have shown, he was regularly arraigned and did personally plead.
If, before arraignment and before he was called upon to plead, he chose voluntarily to inject into the record a plea in bar by his attorneys, that is his own act, of which he cannot complain. He was not bound nor called on to plead. His pleading and the mode thereof were of his own choice. He cannot complain that the judge did not refuse to receive his plea thus tendered, which he made his own, because the minutes show he was personally present when the plea was tried and overruled.
2. That the minutes do not show the presence of the prisoner when the question of trial by jury was tried and overruled. The record does not show that there was any separate trial of this question. So far as appears, there was but one hearing and trial, at which the minutes do show that the prisoner was present.
3. That the court erred in overruling the prayer for trial by jury; and
4. That the court erred in overruling the plea of autrefois acquit.
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...sufficient to render the confession inadmissible." Heldt v. State, 20 Neb. 496, 30 N.W. 626; Kelly v. State, 72 Ala. 244; State v. Meekins, 41 La.Ann. 543, 6 So. 822; v. Patterson, 73 Mo. 695. "The third and last threat relied upon by the defendants as we have seen was that of the officer w......
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...96 Mo. 241, 9 S. W. 636;State v. Bradford, 156 Mo. 91, 56 S. W. 898;State v. Armstrong, 167 Mo. 257, 66 S. W. 961;State v. Meekins, 41 La. Ann. 543, 6 So. 822;State v. Williams, 129 La. 215, 55 So. 769, Ann. Cas. 1913B, 302;Heldt v. State, 20 Neb. 496, 30 N. W. 626, 57 Am. Rep. 835;State v.......
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