State v. Wells

• Decision Date: 05 January 1931
• Docket Number: 30986
• Court: Louisiana Supreme Court
• Parties: STATE v. WELLS

132 So. 349

171 La. 795

STATE v. WELLS

No. 30986

Supreme Court of Louisiana

January 5, 1931

Appeal from Eighth Judicial District Court, Parish of La Salle; F E. Jones, Judge.

Moore Wells was convicted of robbing a bank, and he appeals.

Affirmed.

Stephens Holstein, of Jena, and T. F. Hunter, of Alexandria, for appellant.

Percy Saint, Atty. Gen., Harry Fuller, Dist. Atty., of Winnfield Vinson M. Mouser, Asst. Dist. Atty., of Columbia, and E. R Schowalter, Asst. to Atty. Gen., for the State.

OPINION

O'NIELL, C. J.

The appellant was convicted of robbing a bank and sentenced to imprisonment in the penitentiary. He relies upon two bills of exception.

The first bill has reference to the examination of the prospective jurors on their voir dire. Article 358 of the Code of Criminal Procedure provides that the jurors shall be tendered first to the prosecution, and, if accepted, then to the defense; and that, after a juror has been accepted by both sides, neither side has the right to challenge him peremptorily, but that it shall be within the discretion of the judge, and not subject to review, to allow either side to peremptorily challenge up to the time that the jury is impaneled. In this instance, the juror was tendered first to the district attorney for examination, and, when the district attorney had completed his examination, but had neither accepted nor rejected the juror, he was tendered to the attorneys for the defense for examination; and, after they had completed their examination, the prospective juror was tendered to the district attorney for acceptance or rejection, and, if accepted by the district attorney, was tendered to the defendant's attorneys for acceptance or rejection. The attorneys for the defendant objected to being required to examine a juror until or unless the district attorney had accepted him. The judge overruled the objection, and, in the statement per curiam, says that the method of examination was according to an established custom of the court, and was not forbidden by the Code of Criminal Procedure. From the language of article 358 of the Code, construed precisely, it seems to be not intended that a prospective juror should be tendered to the defendant's attorney for examination, unless he is first accepted by the district attorney. But the purpose of the provision is merely to avoid the unnecessary delay of having the defendant's attorney go through the useless proceeding of examining one whom the district attorney does not accept as a juror. The article of the Code does not, in terms or by implication, compel the district attorney to announce whether he accepts or rejects a juror before he is tendered to the defendant's attorney for examination. Conceding, for the sake of argument, that the tendering of a prospective juror to the defendant's attorney for examination, after the district attorney has examined him, is a tacit acceptance of the juror by the district attorney, it is only a tentative acceptance; for article 359 of the Code of Criminal Procedure provides that, after a juror has been accepted by both sides, he may be challenged for cause by either side at any time before the beginning of the hearing of evidence; and article...