Stewart v. State
| Decision Date | 11 October 1900 |
| Citation | 28 So. 815,42 Fla. 591 |
| Parties | STEWART et al. v. STATE. |
| Court | Florida Supreme Court |
Error to criminal court of record, Hillsboro county; W. A. Carter Judge.
Samuel Stewart and Lennie Stewart were convicted of crime, and bring error. Affirmed.
See 28 So. 56.
Syllabus by the Court
1. The acts and conduct of a witness relative to the matters in controversy which are inconsistent with his testimony likewise his motives, interest, or animus as connected with the cause or with the parties thereto, may be proved for the purpose of weakening the force of his testimony; and for the same purpose it is proper to admit evidence of statements made by the witness relative to matters material to the issues contradictory of his testimony on the trial. As to all of these matters, if the witness denies or fails to admit the imputed act, conduct, motive, interest, animus, or contradictory statement when interrogated about them on cross-examination, he may be contradicted by other testimony proving them.
2. The answer of a witness on cross-examination respecting any fact irrelevant to the issue would be conclusive, and no question relating to facts irrelevant to the issue can be put on cross-examination merely for the purpose of impeaching the credit of the witness by contradicting him.
COUNSEL Barron Phillips, for plaintiffs in error.
William B. Lamar, Atty. Gen., for the State.
On June 20, 1899, plaintiffs in error were tried and convicted in the criminal court of record of Hillsboro county upon an information charging that they in that county, on September 1, 1898 'being and knowing themselves to be persons within the degrees of consanguinity within which marriages are prohibited, and being forbidden to intermarry by reason that said Samuel Stewart was a brother of the said Lennie Stewart did then and there unlawfully and feloniously commit incestuous fornication, and did then and there incestuously have carnal knowledge each of the body of the other, against the form of the statute,' etc., and from the sentence imposed upon them sued out this writ of error.
Though various grounds of error are assigned, only one of them is argued in the brief filed in this court. The others, under the prevailing practice, must be treated as abandoned.
The principal witnesses for the state were James Bird and Henry Bird, who claimed to have witnessed an act of sexual intercourse between the plaintiffs in error in May, 1898. James Bird stated that it was on Saturday before the third Sunday in May, about the 14th day; that when he returned home that day he looked at the calendar because he was afraid the matter would be called, and he knew it was on or about the 14th day of May. Henry Bird stated that it occurred about May 14, 1898, and, on cross-examination, that when they reached home James Bird looked at the almanac, and said it was the 14th; that he asked James Bird to be certain, and the latter told him it was the 14th. He was then asked on cross-examination whether he did not meet John Browning on his way to see Whidden some time within a week when he was on his way to town, and asked him what time it was that the act occurred, and if he did not ask him as to what day it was said to have occurred; to all of which the witness gave a negative answer. Plaintiffs in error produced John Browning as a witness, who stated that he remembered a conversation he had with Henry Bird on the way to town, when Bird was on his way to Whidden's, and was then asked to state what that conversation was, to which the prosecuting...
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