State v. Thomas
| Decision Date | 01 February 1904 |
| Docket Number | 14,972 |
| Citation | 35 So. 914,111 La. 804 |
| Court | Louisiana Supreme Court |
| Parties | STATE v. THOMAS |
Appeal from Ninth Judicial District Court, Parish of Madison Francis Xavier Ransdell, Judge.
William Thomas was convicted of murder, and appeals. Affirmed.
A. L Slack, for appellant.
Walter Guion, Atty. Gen., and David Mandeville Evans, Jr., Dist Atty. (Lewis Guion, of counsel), for the State.
The defendant was convicted of murder and sentenced to be hanged and he appeals.
He assigned as error apparent on the face of the record that the record nowhere showed that an indictment had been presented in court by the grand jury.
The assignment was well founded, but the fact being that an indictment had been duly presented, although the minutes of the court did not show it, the Attorney General procured a correction of the minutes and of the record does now show compliance with this essential formality.
Now, however, the defendant finds fault with the proceedings for the correction of the minutes. They are irregular and fatally defective, he says, in that they were made out of his presence and without notice to him.
The defendant did not need to be present when the court corrected its minutes so as to make them conform to the truth. His counsel was notified and was present. This was sufficient.
Defendant also complains of the lower court's refusal to allow him to prove threats. The ground of the refusal was that proper foundation had not been laid by proof of an overt act. Defendant's insistence is not that a proper foundation was laid, but that without the laying of a foundation the evidence was admissible as part of the res gestae and in mitigation.
The time when the alleged threats were made is not otherwise specified than that it was "recently." This may mean hours, days, or, for the matter of that, months, before the fatal occurrence. Evidently, under these circumstances, the alleged threats are not shown to have been part of the res gestae.
So far as proving threats without having first laid a foundation is concerned, to say that, where the proof of threats is offered in mitigation, the laying of a foundation is unnecessary, is to say that threats may be proved in all cases without the postulate of a hostile demonstration. The situation would then be that threats could be proved in every case of murder and the firmly established jurisprudence requiring the proof...
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