State v. Robinson

• Decision Date: 01 January 1900
• Docket Number: 13,263
• Citation: 52 La.Ann. 541,27 So. 129
• Court: Louisiana Supreme Court
• Parties: STATE OF LOUISIANA v. JAMES ROBINSON

27 So. 129

52 La.Ann. 541

STATE OF LOUISIANA v. JAMES ROBINSON

No. 13,263

Supreme Court of Louisiana

January 1, 1900

APPEAL from the Criminal District Court, Parish of Orleans -- Moise, J.

Milton J. Cunningham, Attorney General, Robert H. Marr, District Attorney, and Joseph E. Generelly, Assistant District Attorney, for Plaintiff, Appellee.

Paul E Lassalle, for Defendant, Appellant.

OPINION

MONROE J.

Defendant was indicted for murder, tried convicted and sentenced to death, but, upon appeal to this court, a new trial was granted him. (State vs. Robinson, 51st Ann., 694.) He has been tried again, convicted of manslaughter, sentenced to imprisonment at hard labor for twenty years, and has again appealed. He now presents his case to this court in five bills of exception, and a motion for new trial.

Bill No. 1. It appears from the recitals of this bill, including the testimony incorporated in it, that, when Paul Valentine, the deceased, was shot, one John Williams, was one block away, that he started "right away" and "walked fast", in the direction of the shooting, that Valentine had, in the meanwhile, been running in Williams' direction, so that Williams testifies: "He met me more than half way". Being asked: "How far was he (Valentine) from the place where he was shot?" the witness replied: "I could not tell you that." Q. -- "Was it half a square?" A. -- "Near about; a little over". The court thereupon overruled the objection to the question, asked by the Assistant District Attorney: "What did Valentine tell you, when you got to him?", and the witness answered: "He said that he was shot to death. I asked him who shot him. He said Jim Robinson." And counsel for the defendant, thereupon, objected and excepted to the ruling of the court, upon the ground that the deceased had run one square after being shot, and that the deceased (witness?) was near the corner of Hancock and Dauphine, which was fully a square away from where the shooting occurred, and in company with another man, named "Butler, and that the prisoner was not there, and that therefore any statement then made by the deceased, to this witness in regard to the shooting was irrelevant, inadmissible, and no part of the res gestae".

The judge a quo gives the following as his reasons for his ruling; to-wit:

"The testimony objected to in John Williams' evidence was clearly a part of the res gestae. The averment in the bill that the witness was a block from the scene of the shooting when Valentine made his statement is erroneous, as will be seen by Williams' entire testimony, which is made part of these written reasons. The facts are: Lepage, an eye witness to the shooting, heard Valentine exclaim, when shot, 'Jim Robinson, you shot me to death!' Valentine then sped rapidly down Dauphine street, yelling 'Jim Robinson shot me', to use the language of the witness Descossa, whom he passed. Before completing the square, he fell. Williams immediately approached, and Valentine said: 'I am shot to death'. Asked who shot him, he replied: 'Jim Robinson shot me'. Thirty seconds could not have elapsed, since the shooting."

* * * * * *

"From the time he was shot until Williams reached him, it was the same outpouring of a distracted mind, without the addition of any new matter. Its sameness negatived any idea of premeditation or fabrication, or of its being a narrative, retrospective in character. Continued utterances of the same idea, uninterruptedly made, in the same language, indicate the absence of any suggestiveness. Each outburst is a link in the same chain of thought, and proceeds as much from the same original cause as the wave circles of a pond that dilate, from a point where a pebble is thrown upon its surface."

Counsel for the defendant, in his brief, concedes the correctness of the judge's statement as to the distance between the place of the shooting and that of the declaration of the deceased to the witness, Williams. He says: "The declaration was not made at the place of the event, but a little over half a square away". He argues, however, that the declaration occurred after "the trouble was all over, and after the parties had separated", and that it contained "nothing but the words of one of the participants, when narrating what had become a past event."

We agree with the judge a quo that, upon the facts as presented, the declaration objected to was part of the res gestae. That it was made at a distance of half a square from the scene of the shooting, does not, under the circumstances disclosed, affect the question; since it was made within thirty seconds after the shooting, and as a direct, immediate, spontaneous, and continuous result of the impression, made by the shooting upon the man who was shot.

In State vs. Estoup, 39 Ann., 219, it appeared that, about ten minutes after the deceased had been shot, his brother was called out of the house, where he was, by some one, who said to him that his brother was shot, that when he went out, he found the man who had been shot, sitting on the steps of a house, about sixty or seventy yards from where the shooting was said to have taken place, in company with a brother-in-law, and it was then, and under those circumstances that the declaration was made to him, which was admitted as part of the res gestae. It was held by this court that such admission was erroneous.

In State vs. Melton, 37th Ann., 77, it was sought by the defendants, to prove, as part of the res gestae, a certain declaration, made by them six or eight minutes after the killing, after they had gone sixty or eighty yards, and then returned on their way home "or wherever they went", which declaration the judge a quo held, was evidently "not spontaneous", as the defendants had met the same witness a few minutes before, twenty-five or thirty yards from the gate, as they were leaving, and "they made no such statement." The testimony was excluded by the trial judge, and this court said: "We cannot say the ruling, under these circumstances was erroneous, but, in any event, the matter is too unimportant to justify a reversal on that ground."

Upon the other hand, in State vs. Eusebe, 42nd Ann., 727, the syllabus reads:

"Declarations made by the party shot, immediately after the shooting, are a part of the facts of the case, and of the events inseparable from the crime, and are admissible in evidence as part of the res gestae".

In Traveler's Insurance Co. vs. Mosely, 8th Wallace, 397, it was held that:

"Declarations of a party as to the cause of his injury, as that he had fallen down stairs, made immediately after the occurrence, are admissible as part of the res gestae, to show such cause."

In the case thus referred to, the Supreme Court of the United States cites Rex vs. Foster, 6th Carr & P., 325, in which there was an indictment for manslaughter, for killing the deceased by driving a cab over him. A wagoner, who was near by, but did not see the accident, was allowed to testify that, immediately after it happened, on hearing the deceased groan, he went to him, and asked him what was the matter. "Gurney, Baron, said, that what the deceased said at the instant, as to the cause of the accident, was clearly admissible. Park, Baron, said that it was the best possible testimony that, under the circumstances, could be adduced to show what knocked the deceased down. Mr. Justice Patterson concurred. The prisoner was convicted." The court also cited Commonwealth vs. McPike, 3 Cush., (Mass.) 181, where the defendant was charged with killing his wife, and proof was admitted to the effect that the deceased came down stairs from her own room, crying murder, and bleeding, that another woman, into whose room she was admitted, went at her request, for a physician; that a third person, who had been attracted by her cries, went for a watchman, and, on his return, found the deceased on the floor, bleeding profusely, and that she then told him that her husband had stabbed her. It was held by the Supreme Court of Massachusetts that her declaration was "of the nature of res gestae and that the time when it was made was so recent after the injury was inflicted as to justify receiving it on that ground." The court cited other cases of a similar character, and then, referring to the case before it, said: "Here, the principal fact is the bodily injury. The res gestae are the statements of the cause made by the assured almost contemporaneously with the occurrence, and those relating to the consequences made while the latter subsisted, and were in progress. * * * The tendency of recent adjudications is to extend, rather than to narrow, the scope of the doctrine. Rightly guarded in its practical application, there is no principle in the law of evidence, more safe in its results. There is none which rests upon a more solid basis of reason and authority."

In People vs. Callaghan, 6 Pac. Rep., 54, it appeared that five or six minutes after the shooting, the deceased said: "Patsy Callaghan shot me", and the court said: "The period of time at which it was made was so recent after the shooting as to justify its admission as part of the res gestae. No time had elapsed for the fabrication of a story."

In Territory vs. Davis, 10 P. 359, it appeared that two or three minutes after he was shot, and after he had been carried to a drug store, a few feet away, the deceased stated that the defendant called to him to get down on his knees, and on his refusal to do so, shot him. This declaration was permitted to be proved as part of the res gestae.

The more generally accepted rule, upon this subject, we think, is fairly stated as follows, to-wit:

That only, is res gestae, which is part of the actual transaction, or which is said or done in so short a time "after the...