State v. Paine

• Decision Date: 14 June 1897
• Docket Number: 12,537
• Citation: 22 So. 316,49 La.Ann. 1092
• Court: Louisiana Supreme Court
• Parties: STATE OF LOUISIANA v. PATRICK PAINE

22 So. 316

49 La.Ann. 1092

STATE OF LOUISIANA v. PATRICK PAINE

No. 12,537

Supreme Court of Louisiana

June 14, 1897

Argued June 5, 1897

APPEAL from the Fifth Judicial District Court for the Parish of Ouachita. Potts, J.

M. J Cunningham, Attorney General, and J. P. Madison, District Attorney, for Plaintiff, Appellee.

Frank Vaughan and E. T. Lamkin, for Defendant, Appellant.

OPINION

WATKINS J.

The defendant appealed from a verdict convicting him of the crime of murder, and a sentence of death -- alleging insanity as his defence.

The record is very meagre and furnishes but two bills of exceptions which were retained by the defendant's counsel.

I.

The first bill of exceptions appertains to the objection which the defendant's counsel urged to going to trial when the case was called for trial.

The bill relates that when the case was called for trial counsel objected to going to trial for the reason that the order appointing physicians as experts to examine into the mental condition of the defendant, with a view of determining his sanity or insanity, had not been complied with, said experts having presented no report; and that in the absence of such report the defendant should not be compelled to go into the trial.

At least, the foregoing is the purport of the objection which is assigned by counsel in the bill of exceptions, and to which the trial judge replied as follows, viz.:

"When the application for the appointment of three physicians was presented to the court, I stated that I would designate three physicians who could examine the defendant and be summoned as witnesses, and testify upon the trial of the case before the jury as to the sanity or insanity of the prisoner. These same witnesses were summoned as witnesses, and all three attended the trial. The defendant did not call or examine either one of them as a witness. The State, in rebuttal, called Dr. Forsythe and asked him about the mental condition of the defendant. It was never contemplated that these physicians should make a report to the court; but, on the contrary, they were appointed simply that they might qualify themselves in advance, to testify on the trial."

The correctness of the judge's conclusions is undeniable and his ruling was undoubtedly correct.

The physicians were only intended to render service to the court as expert witnesses in the course of the trial, and it was the duty of defendant's counsel to have placed them on the stand and interrogated them with reference to the sanity of their client, carrying the burden of proving his sanity by a fair preponderance of the evidence as the defendant did. State vs. Scott, 49 An. 253.

II.

The second bill of exceptions relates to the alleged error of the trial judge in declining to grant the defendant a new trial.

The ground principally assigned and now pressed upon our attention is that the committee of expert physicians had not, at the time of the trial, made any formal report to the court with regard to the sanity of the defendant, and that a trial having been erroneously ordered in the absence of such report, a new trial should have been granted for the purpose of allowing said experts to examine into and investigate the mental condition of the defendant before sentence is pronounced upon him.

The trial judge assigns as his reason for refusing the new trial the same reasons he had already assigned in the previous bill, to the effect that the physicians had only been previously designated as expert witnesses, so that they might make an examination into the mental condition of the defendant beforehand, the better to enable themselves to furnish the court with an...