Williams v. State

• Decision Date: 03 May 1966
• Docket Number: No. 65--823,65--823
• Citation: 185 So.2d 718
• Parties: Arthur WILLIAMS, Appellant, v. The STATE of Florida, Appellee.
• Court: Florida District Court of Appeals

Page 718

185 So.2d 718

Arthur WILLIAMS, Appellant, v. The STATE of Florida, Appellee.

No. 65--823.

District Court of Appeal of Florida, Third District.

May 3, 1966.

Robert L. Koeppel, Public Defender and Phillip A. Hubbart, Asst. Public Defender, for appellant.

Earl Faircloth, Atty. Gen., and Herbert P. Benn, First Asst. Atty. Gen., for appellee.

Before HENDRY, C.J., and BARKDULL and SWANN, JJ.

BARKDULL, Judge.

Appellant seeks review of a conviction and sentence of 15 years in the State penitentiary.

An information was filed charging him with the crime of robbery. He pleaded not guilty to the charge and waived a jury trial. At the trial, the court entered into evidence (over objections) a typewritten transcript of an interrogation of him, held in connection with a robbery of one Kayo Oil Co. The transcript was not shown to the appellant, nor was it read to him or signed by him. At the conclusion of all the evidence, the trial court found the appellant guilty and entered the judgment and sentence appealed.

The appellant contends the trial court committed reversible error in admitting into evidence the stenographer's transcribed record of a police interrogation as his confession, when said was not read nor acknowledged by him prior to its introduction into evidence. We agree and reverse the conviction for a new trial.

It is indisputed that the appellant did not read the stenographer's record after it was transcribed nor did he sign or adopt it in any way as his own statement. The transcribed record was a statement or memorandum of the stenographer as to what the appellant said, but was not a statement of the appellant and, consequently, was not admissible in evidence as such. 23 C.J.S. Criminal Law § 833, pp. 237--238, states the applicable law on the admissibility of a written confession made by a defendant:

'If a person orally confesses to a crime, and his statement or words are reduced to writing by another person, the resulting written instrument is not admissible as a written confession until the confessor acknowledges the correctness of the writing. A written confession may be admissible if written or signed by the confessor, or if it was read to or by him, and acknowledged to be correct.

'If a statement purporting to be a confession is given by accused, and is reduced to writing by another person, before the written instrument will be deemed admissible as the written confession of accused, he must in some manner have indicated his acquiescence in the correctness of the writing itself. If the transcribed statement is not read by or to accused, and is not signed by accused, or in some other manner approved, or its correctness acknowledged, the instrument is not legally, or per se, the confession of accused; and it is not admissible in evidence as the written confession of accused. The written instrument constitutes merely a memorandum of what was said, and the only confession that does exist is the oral confession of accused. The oral testimony of witnesses is the only admissible evidence of the purported confession.'

2 Wharton's Criminal Evidence, § 340, p. 19 (12th Ed. Anderson, 1955) states:

'When an oral confession is taken down stenographically and then...