State v. Williams

• Decision Date: 01 January 1901
• Docket Number: 14,480
• Court: Louisiana Supreme Court
• Parties: STATE OF LOUISIANA v. WILLIE WILLIAMS

32 So. 402

108 La. 222

STATE OF LOUISIANA v. WILLIE WILLIAMS

No. 14,480

Supreme Court of Louisiana

January 1, 1901

APPEAL from the Twenty-first Judicial District, Parish of Pointe Coupee -- Claiborne, J.

The defendant, sentenced to be hanged under a conviction for murder, appealed.

He rests his right to reversal upon the following bill of exceptions:

"Be it known that on the trial of the above styled and numbered cause the corpus delicti not having been proven or admitted and no evidence having been introduced to prove the homicide of Alfred Hebert, alleged in the indictment to have been committed by the defendant, Willie Williams, the State put upon the stand one T. W. Noble, who testified as follows":

"Witness was well acquainted with the deceased, Alfred Hebert, and resided in the same house with him. Witness knew of his own knowledge that on the night of the alleged homicide, said Alfred Hebert was standing on guard at Fordoche station, in the Parish of Pointe Coupee, near the railroad track, for the purpose of preventing some one in the village of Fordoche from escaping or passing beyond the limits of the village of Fordoche. Witness, prior to the affray in which said Alfred Hebert had been mortally wounded, had last seen said Alfred Hebert at 10 o'clock the night of the alleged homicide. At the time when the alleged homicide was committed witness was in bed in his house, which was situated very near the station, and had heard a train arrive at and leave the station at some time between the hours of two and four A. M on the night of the alleged homicide, and a few minutes after the arrival of the said train the deceased, Alfred Hebert entered the room in which witness was sleeping, badly shot through the head."

"The State then offered to prove by the witness that the deceased Alfred Hebert, on entering the room of witness as aforesaid told witness that while he was standing on guard at said railroad station, a few minutes previously, a train arrived at the station and a convict jumped off the train and walked up to said Alfred Hebert and asked him if he was a railroad man; that said Alfred Hebert replied that he was not whereupon said convict jumped upon said Alfred Hebert and took his pistol away from him and shot him with it through the head, and inflicted the wound with which said Alfred Hebert was suffering at the time of said conversation with witness."

"The defendant objected to this testimony of witness as to said declaration of said Alfred Hebert made to witness out of the presence of the accused, on the ground that the same was hearsay and that no foundation had been laid for the introduction of the same as a dying declaration."

"The court overruled the objection and allowed the testimony to be introduced, on the ground that it was a part of the res gestae, to which ruling of the court defendant excepted, and reserved this his bill of exceptions and tendered the same for the signature of the court."

By the court:

"The objection on the part of the accused to the testimony of T W. Noble was overruled on the following grounds: Noble had already testified without objection that Hebert, the deceased, who resided with him and who had left him shortly after ten o'clock at night to stand guard near the depot, had come in some time between two and four o'clock of the same night, badly wounded in the head."

"The witness was then asked to tell what Hebert said and this was the question objected to on the ground that statements of deceased made out of the presence of accused were not admissible as stated above. When this objection was made the jury was retired and the matter argued out of the presence of the jury, and the following facts elicited, to-wit: That just as Hebert came in wounded and waked witness, he, witness distinctly heard the noise or rumbling of a train just pulled out from the station and going east; that Hebert said the man who shot him had jumped on the freight train which was just pulling out; that he, Hebert, had been standing on the narrow space between the main track and the switch when the...