State v. Williams
| Citation | 105 So. 46,158 La. 1011 |
| Decision Date | 22 June 1925 |
| Docket Number | 27241 |
| Court | Supreme Court of Louisiana |
| Parties | STATE v. WILLIAMS |
Appeal from Eleventh Judicial District Court, Parish of Vernon; Hal. A. Burgess, Judge.
Richard Williams was convicted of manslaughter, and he appeals.
Affirmed.
J. R Ferguson and A. B. Cavanaugh, both of Leesville, for appellant.
Percy Saint, Atty. Gen., Percy T. Ogden, Asst. Atty. Gen., John B Hill, Dist. Atty., of Many (E. R. Schowalter, Asst. Atty Gen., of counsel), for the State.
Defendant was indicted and tried for murder. He was convicted of man-slaughter and sentenced to imprisonment in the state penitentiary at hard labor for not less than five, nor more than six, years. This appeal is from said verdict and sentence.
There are two bills of exception in the record, which, however, present only one question for review. The state offered a witness to prove, as a part of the res gestae, a statement made to the witness by the deceased shortly after he had been fatally shot touching the person who had shot him.
Defendant's bill of exception recites, inter alia, that the witness called to the stand by the state was not a witness to the shooting, and that he arrived at the scene more than 15 minutes after the occurrence. That the district attorney propounded to the witness the following question, viz.: "What did Dan Wheeler tell you when you came up?" Dan Wheeler was the deceased. The question and the answer sought to be elicited were objected to on the ground that they were not a part of the res gestae. This objection was overruled, and the witness answered: "I walked up there and asked him who shot him, and he said Richard (meaning defendant) shot him."
The trial judge in his statement per curiam sets forth that he admitted the testimony as part of the res gestae because the witness had testified the statement was made to him by the deceased while he was lying at the place he was shot, and about 5 minutes after the shooting had occurred.
We think the ruling was correct. Res gestae are events speaking for themselves through the instinctive and spontaneous words and acts of participants, and not the words of the participants when narrating the events. The distinguishing characteristics of these declarations are that they must be necessary incidents of the criminal act or immediate concomitants of it, and that they are not due to calculated policy or deliberate design. There are no limits of time within which the res gestae can be arbitrarily confined. They vary in fact with each particular case. State v Thomas, 30 La.Ann. 600; State v. Molisse, 38 La.Ann. 381, 58 Am. Rep. 181; State v. Ramsey, 48 La.Ann. 1407, 20 So. 904; State v. Spillers, 105 La. 163, 29 So. 480; State v....
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...limits of time within which the res gestae can be arbitrarily confined . They vary in fact with each particular case. State v. Williams, 158 La. 1011, 1013, 105 So. 46, 47 (1925) (collecting cases). The term res gestae as it pertains to hearsay no longer appears in the rules of evidence but......
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State v. Scott, 2015–KK–1762.
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