State v. Young

• Decision Date: 30 June 1863
• Citation: 60 N.C. 126
• Court: North Carolina Supreme Court
• Parties: STATE v. HENRY YOUNG AND COSBY YOUNG.

60 N.C. 126

STATE

v.HENRY YOUNG AND COSBY YOUNG.

Supreme Court of North Carolina.

June Term, 1863.

Where a person suspected of a murder was arrested and brought before a jury of inquest as a witness and subjected to a rigid examination, it was held that this examination was not competent evidence against him on a trial for the offense.

THIS was an indictment for MURDER, tried before SAUNDERS, J., at the Fall Term, 1861, of Macon Superior Court.

The prisoners were indicted for the murder of John Wesley Jenks. On an inquest over the body of the deceased, the wife of one of the prisoners had left the place and gone in the direction of the residences of the prisoners, in order, it was suspected, that she might give them notice to escape, and in order to prevent this, and to avoid alarming them, they were arrested as witnesses by the deputy sheriff, (several of the jury acting as his assistants,) and brought to the place of holding the inquest. They were then sworn as witnesses and subjected to a rigid examination, which, in many of its particulars, were supposed to implicate them in the homicide. They were then charged with the crime, and on the trial in the Superior Court, the solicitor, for the State, offered to read in evidence the examination of the prisoners before the jury of inquest. This was objected to by the counsel for the defendant, but admitted by the Court. Defendants' counsel excepted.

There was a verdict of guilty, a judgment, and an appeal by the defendants.

Attorney General, for the State .

No counsel for the defendants.

BATTLE, J.

There are very few questions in which there is a greater conflict of judicial decisions, than in that, whether the statement made on oath, by a person while under examination, as a witness, before a coroner's inquest or an examining magistrate, can afterwards be used as evidence against him upon an indictment for the same offense as that as to which he has been examined. In Roscoe's Crim. Ev. p. 49 and 50, references to many of these conflicting cases may be found. Mr. Phillips, in the last edition of his valuable treatise on evidence, after referring to most of the cases, on the subject, endeavored to draw a distinction between the case where the prisoner was in custody, or was under suspicion, and where he was examined against another party under a distinct charge; see 1 Phil. on Ev. 404. Mr. Roscoe, in remarking upon the distinction, says that in none of the recent cases had it been adverted to as the ground of decision. He then closes his observations on the subject, by the remark “that the ground on which a deposition, upon oath, by a prisoner, has been generally considered to be inadmissible, without reference to the circumstances under which it is made, is, that being upon oath, it cannot be looked upon as a voluntary...