Stephens v. People
| Decision Date | 04 June 1878 |
| Citation | 38 Mich. 739 |
| Court | Michigan Supreme Court |
| Parties | Anna Stephens v. The People |
Submitted April 17, 1878
Error to Alpena.
Information for keeping a house of ill-fame. Defendant appeals.
Judgment reversed, and cause remanded.
J. D Turnbull and J. L. Chipman for plaintiff in error.
Attorney General Otto Kirchner for The People declined to support the conviction.
The plaintiff in error was convicted of keeping a house of prostitution. The errors assigned which require attention arise upon the rulings on challenges to jurors. The offense was alleged to have been committed between the fifteenth and seventeenth days of October, 1877. Six of the persons who were summoned as jurors on being challenged stated under oath that they had formed an opinion from what they had heard, or from reputation, that the house kept by the defendant was a house of prostitution, and some of them stated that their opinions or impressions were of that character that it would require evidence to remove them. In each instance when the defense had gone through with its examination of the juror, the judge took him in hand, and the following is his examination of the first:
Question. Will you state whether the information you have received or the impression you have formed in regard to the house there is of such a positive character that it would be impossible for you to sit here and hear the testimony and decide impartially between the people of this State and the prisoner at the bar, as to whether she was guilty of the crime charged within the date mentioned in this information? Answer. I think not sir. Question. You think you could sit? Answer. Yes sir.
The court thereupon overruled the challenge, and on the defendant's counsel proposing to ask the juror another question, the judge interposed and said: "You have got done examining and submitted the challenge, and the court has overruled it." To which the counsel for defendant responded: "Have we not the privilege of asking some other questions?" The court replied: Counsel for the defendant then inquired: "Do I understand the court to hold that we cannot ask any further questions?" The judge replied: "After you have once submitted the question, and the court has overruled it, and I refuse to allow any further questions to that juror, go on with your challenges." Similar proceedings took place on the examination of each of the other jurors; the judge in every instance declining to permit the counsel for the defendant to put any questions after the judge himself had taken the juror in hand and declared himself satisfied. It does not appear from the record that the prosecuting attorney put to the jurors any questions whatever, but in every instance the judge took upon himself the burden of the investigation.
We shall not question the right of the judge to pursue the examination of the juror personally, instead of leaving it, as is customary, to the prosecuting officer; but he is mistaken in supposing that the defense could have any less liberty in re-examination than if he had allowed the case to proceed in the usual way. He was mistaken, also, in assuming that the defense had submitted the challenge. The defense had indeed rested on their examination; but they had not rested the case as it stood when the judge concluded, and it was just as much their privilege to meet, by further inquiries, what had been drawn out by him as it would have been had the same replies been drawn out by the prosecuting officer. If the judge on the trial of the main issue were to take upon himself the cross-examination of defendant's witnesses, he might with the same reason deny the right of re-examination in that case as in this.
But the judge was equally in the wrong in overruling the challenge on the showing as it stood. His decision we understand to have been planted on the act of ...
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