State v. Sneed
| Decision Date | 19 January 1976 |
| Docket Number | No. 56585,56585 |
| Citation | 328 So.2d 126 |
| Parties | STATE of Louisiana v. Bobby Ray SNEED et al. |
| Court | Louisiana Supreme Court |
Bobby L. Culpepper, Holloway, Baker, Culpepper & Brunson, Jonesboro, Nesib Nader, Shreveport, for defendants-appellants.
William J. Guste, Jr., Atty. Gen., Barbara Rutledge, Asst. Atty. Gen., Leon H. Whitten, Dist. Atty., Robert Y. Butler, Asst. Dist. Atty., for plaintiff-appellee.
On June 28, 1974 the Grand Jury of Bienville Parish charged Bobby Ray Sneed, Eugene Wright and Arthur Gardner with the first degree murder of Curtis E. Jones on June 13, 1974. A change of venue was granted to Claiborne Parish where the accused were tried and found guilty of second degree murder. They were each sentenced on April 24, 1975 to life imprisonment at hard labor, not eligible for parole, probation or suspension of sentence for a period of twenty years. On this appeal, seventy-three errors are assigned by the defense.
Early on the morning of June 13, 1974 the elderly couple, Curtis E. Jones and his wife Maude, were brutally beaten by a number of assailants as they slept side by side in their home at Gibsland in Bienville Parish. The assailants forced Maude Jones to disclose the location of her purse from which they obtained $700. Jones and his wife were then bound with wire and the assailants made good their escape. When Maude Jones was able to loosen the wire which bound her, she summoned help. Clyde Stinnet, a neighbor, responded to her call. When help arrived about 7:30 that morning Curtis Jones was dead. Maude Jones was seriously injured by the assault and required lengthy hospitalization.
While she was testifying to the facts and circumstances surrounding the beating of her husband and herself, Maude Jones said she could hear her husband begging his attacker to stop, saying over and over 'Oh, don't.'
When defense counsel objected that the testimony was hearsay, the objection was overruled, the State's attorney explaining that the testimony was offered to prove that the statement was made, not for the truth of its content.
Whether offered for the purpose stated or otherwise, the statement of the decedent while he was being brutally beaten to death was clearly admissible as part of the res gestae, La.R.S. 15:447--48, a well-recognized exception to otherwise objectionable hearsay testimony.
Defense counsel makes a general assignment that error occurred when the State's attorney propounded leading questions to Maude Jones as she testified for the State. In brief the State alleges that 'the objection was actually that same was not material nor relevant,' while defendants argue the leading nature of the State's inquiry. Reference is then made in the State's brief to Maude Jones' testimony in which she described the injuries to her face sustained during the beating on June 13. When the State's attorney asked her, 'What about your hands were they . . .', defense counsel objected that the question was leading, and was neither material nor relevant to the beating death of her husband. When the objection was overruled, the witness answered,
The answer to the question objected to was favorable to defendants. Whether the objection is based on the materiality or relevancy of the testimony or the leading nature of the question, there is no merit to this assignment. In connection with the objection that the question was leading, we note the trial judge's observation in ruling on a similar objection shortly thereafter: 'The witness is aged and somewhat infirm and I will give him (the State's attorney) a little bit more leeway . . ..' He then admonished the State's attorney to moderate the leading nature of his questions.
While the State's attorney was questioning Maude Jones, she was asked: '. . . some months before June the 13th, Mrs. Jones, what sums of money, the amounts of money that you kept in your home, would you tell the Judge?' When defense counsel objected that the question was leading or because it sought 'very specific sums of money that she has had in the house,' the objection was sustained. Neverthless, the State's attorney pursued the line of questioning and elicited from the witness, without further objection, the fact that several hundred dollars were kept in the house prior to June 13th.
The State's attorney answers the defense argument that this testimony was irrelevant by saying that its purpose was to establish a possible motive for the armed robbery of the Joneses, an element of felony murder, the charge of first degree murder under Article 30(1) of the Criminal Code, the crime with which these defendants were charged. La.R.S. 15:441.
Objection was made by the defense that the answer would be irrelevant when the State's attorney asked 'How do you know Mr. Sneed please, Ma'am, Mrs. Jones?' As the answer disclosed, Sneed had frequented the Jones house as a small boy doing chores. He would therefore be familiar with the premises, and Maude Jones was familiar with his voice which she recognized while the beating was in progress. For both reasons the evidence was relevant and material.
There is no merit to this assignment.
These thirty assignments of error relate principally to testimony, photographs or physical evidence admitted over defense objection that the evidence was not within the scope of the opening statement. Other objections urged in these bills are that the evidence was immaterial, irrelevant and introduced without proper foundation.
Article 766 of the Code of Criminal Procedure requires that 'The opening statement of the state shall explain the nature of the charge, and set forth, in general terms, the nature of the evidence by which the state expects to prove the charge.'
'Evidence not fairly within the scope of the opening statement of the state shall not be admitted in evidence.
'If the state offers evidence that was inadvertently and in good faith omitted from the opening statement, the court, in its discretion may admit the evidence if it finds that the defendant is not taken by surprise or prejudiced in the preparation of his defense.' La.Code Crim.Proc. art. 769.
It is not necessary for the State to explain the evidence in minute detail in its opening statement. Evidence which by implication can be considered within the scope of the opening statement is admissible. State v. Eubanks, 240 La. 552, 124 So.2d 543 (1960); State v. Jones, 230 La. 356, 88 So.2d 655 (1956); State v. McLean, 211 La. 413, 30 So.2d 187 (1947). What may fairly be considered within the scope of the opening statement is admissible. State v. Stahl, 236 La. 362, 107 So.2d 670 (1959). In large measure the entire matter should be considered on a basis of the sound discretion of the trial judge as to prejudicial effect. State v. Clark, 231 La. 807, 93 So.2d 13 (1957). This Court in State v. Sneed, 316 So.2d 372 (La.1975), a case arising out of this same transaction, approved the use of a very general opening statement, citing substantial authority therefor.
The evidence introduced would fall within 'general terms' setting forth 'the nature of the evidence' by which the State expected to prove the charge. And the State furnished notice that inculpatory statements would be used in evidence. Moreover, the opening statement of the State is not part of the record before us. No written motion was made by defense counsel to include the State's opening statement in the record as part of these assignments of error. La.Code Crim.Proc. arts. 841--45, 920.
In any event a reading of this record convincingly demonstrates that defendants were not taken by surprise, and that the trial judge did not abuse his discretion by admitting the evidence.
Clyde Stinnet, a neighbor, responded to Maude Jones' call for help. He testified that when he arrived she said, 'Clyde, they broke in on us, and I think they've killed Curt.' The objection was that the statement was hearsay and Maude Jones was the proper person to testify to what she said.
The statement is admissible as part of the res gestae. Maude Jones had just released herself from the wires which bound her legs and had struggled to the back steps of her house and called to Clyde Stinnet for help. Her statement when he arrived was spontaneous and uttered under the stress of the circumstances surrounding the killing of her husband. Repetition of what she said by the witness Stinnet was corroborative of her testimony that her husband had been beaten and that she cried out for help. La.R.S. 15:447--48; State v. Morgan, 296 So.2d 286 (La.1974). This assignment is without merit.
Jessie W. Collingsworth testified that he drove the vehicle which transported a body from Gibsland to the Bossier General Hospital. Defense counsel objected that there was no foundation to establish whose body was transported. Thereafter, Collingsworth testified that the body was the remains of Jones. The basis for the objection was removed by the witness' later testimony. In addition Lamar Watson, the preceding State witness, testified that he was a funeral director and he had picked up Jones' body for further transfer. Collingsworth's testimony was to establish the next link in the chain of evidence showing that Jones' body was transported to the hospital for an autopsy.
Dr. H. H. Middleton, a general practitioner and Bienville Parish Coroner, was called to the scene of the slaying on the morning of June 13. He testified to the physical condition in which he found the deceased and Maude Jones as a result of the beating they sustained.
This testimony forms the basis of a defense objection that Maude Jones'...
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State v. Sheppard
... ... It is well settled that the question of probable cause and errors alleged to have occurred at the preliminary hearing are moot now that defendant has been tried and convicted by a jury. State v. Sneed, 328 So.2d 126 (La.1976); State v. Luckett, on rehearing, 327 So.2d 365 (La.1976). Accordingly, these assignments of error present nothing for our review ... Assignments of Error Nos. 1, 1A, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 and 7 are without merit ... ASSIGNMENT OF ERROR NO. 9 ... ...
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State v. Drew
... ... The state tendered the witness for recross-examination by defendant. Defendant apparently chose not to recross-examine the witness ... We find no merit to this assigned error. In State v. Sneed, 328 So.2d 126 (La.1976), this court stated: ... Notwithstanding the arguable contention that the redirect examination was beyond the direct and cross-examination, the application of the rule which confines redirect examination of a witness to the subject matter of the cross-examination ... ...
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State v. Passman
... ... The relevancy of proffered evidence depends on whether it tends to prove or disprove a material fact at issue. La. R.S. 15:441 and 435; State v. Sneed, 328 So.2d 126 (La.1976). The relevancy of evidence is to be tested by the purpose for which it is offered. La.R.S. 15:442 ... The obvious purpose of the testimony objected to, was to show that Mr. O'Brien's eye sight was good, despite his advanced age, and that his testimony ... ...
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State v. Trahan, CR
... ... La.C.Cr.P. art. 851. When the new trial motion asserts errors which are discussed in an assignment of error and found to be without merit, the new trial motion is not well-founded. State v. Sneed, 328 So.2d 126 (La.1976). Where the new trial is based upon newly discovered evidence which potentially undermines a witness' credibility, the denial of the motion is erroneous if the evidence is so material as to warrant a different result than that which was reached in the original proceeding ... ...