State v. Sharp

• Decision Date: 30 June 1919
• Docket Number: 23541
• Citation: 83 So. 181,145 La. 891
• Court: Louisiana Supreme Court
• Parties: STATE v. SHARP et al

83 So. 181

145 La. 891

STATE v. SHARP et al

No. 23541

Supreme Court of Louisiana

June 30, 1919

Rehearing Denied November 4, 1919

SYLLABUS

(Syllabus by the Court.)

A statement made by a juror in a criminal case, while the case is under consideration and submission, and offered to be proved by his fellow jurors, on a motion for new trial, with a view of showing that he was incompetent by reason of prejudice, can have no other purpose than to impeach the verdict, and is properly excluded.

A surgeon and acting coroner, who has held an inquest upon the body of a person slain by a gunshot, may testify as an expert as to the cause of death and the probability vel non of suicide.

The consensus of the criminal jurisprudence in this country is to the effect that the presence of the convict at the hearing of a motion for new trial is not required, and that, whether testimony be heard or not.

Elder &amp Digby, of Monroe, and H. G. Fields, of Farmersville, for appellants.

A. V. Coco, Atty. Gen., Thomas W. Robertson, Asst. Atty. Gen., and H. B. Warren, Dist. Atty., of Ruston, for the State.

OPINION

MONROE, C. J.

Defendants, Mrs. J. S. Sharp and her daughter, Mrs. Lena Lockwood, prosecute this appeal from a conviction without capital punishment and sentence, upon a charge of having murdered J. S. Sharp, the husband of the one and stepfather of the other. A number of bills of exception appear in the record, but counsel for defendant say, in their brief:

'We find that only three of them are serious, and we will not take up the time of the court in discussing the other eleven, except where necessary to substantiate some fact in the case.'

The first bill discussed bears the number 14 and reads as follows:

'Be it remembered that, on the trial of a motion for new trial, the juror G. W. Ward having been called by the state, in answer to question by the state, testified that he had not known the defendants prior to this trial, and that he had no bias or prejudice for or against them when sworn on his voir dire, and what he knew about their connection with the death of John Redden he had learned during the trial, and he was then asked by the counsel for the defendant, the defendants being absent, if the only testimony on this matter he had heard during the trial of the case proper was not from the defendant Mrs. Lockwood, and which was in reply to a question from the state, when she answered that she and her mother were present when one John Redden had died, and the juror answered affirmatively; and whereupon counsel for defendant asked him if he had not stated to the other jurors, during their deliberations and before a verdict was reached, that Sharp was not the first man Mrs. Sharp had killed, that she had killed John Redden, with whom she was living in a state of concubinage, for his money, and by poison, and that the doctors had said so, or words to that effect; and whereupon the state objected that the juror could not be heard to impeach his own verdict; and, the court having sustained said objection, the counsel for defendant excepted,' etc.

In his statement, made part of bill 14, the trial judge says that the foregoing is not 'an accurate statement in full,' and that the correct statement of the matter is that made by the district attorney and attached to bill 7, which he (the judge) adopts. Bill 7 contains the recital that, on the hearing of the motion for new trial, defendant had called all the jurors for the purpose of proving that Ward had sworn falsely on his voir dire in saying that he had no prejudice for or against the accused and was in a position to give them a fair trial, and that the court excluded the testimony.

The statement of the district attorney (attached to bill 7) and thus adopted by the judge (as his comment on bill 14) is to the effect that the jurors were sworn and asked by counsel for defendant if the juror Ward had not made statements and arguments in the deliberations of the jury concerning the connection of one of the defendants with the death of one John Redden, some years before, to which it was objected, by the district attorney, that such evidence was not admissible to discredit or impeach the verdict, which objection was sustained; that it was admitted that Ward had sworn, on his voir dire, that he knew nothing of the case and had no bias or prejudice for or against defendants; that the district attorney called Ward to the stand (on the hearing of the motion for new trial), and he then testified that, when examined on his voir dire, he did not know either of the defendants, and had never known them; and that he did not know that one of the defendants was the woman whose name was associated with the death of John Redden until there was testimony to that effect in the course of the trial.

The statement further recites that one of the jurors, called by defendants as a witness, on the hearing of the motion for new trial, testified (on cross-examination) that Ward did not, at any time, claim that he had an acquaintance with, or knowledge of, defendants and the relations of one of them with Redden, when he was examined and sworn as a juror; the court having admitted that negative testimony, but having refused to admit any testimony from any juror...