113 Ga. 726 | Ga. | 1901
Shell Cochran was tried for and convicted of the crime of murder. He made a motion for a new trial, which was overruled, and he excepted.
Where the testimony in a case conflicts, it is the duty of the jury, if they can not reconcile it, to determine where the truth lies, and in order to do this they must take into consideration the credibility of the respective witnesses; and in passing upon the credibility of any witness they can consider any circumstance, shown by the evidence, which would naturally tend to bias or prejudice such witness in favor of the one side or the other. They can con-, sider whether he is himself vitally interested in the result of the trial, whether he will be affected by the verdict rendered therein,
The law requires “ That the judge of the superior court of the county of Campbell hold the spring and fall terms of said court, of each and every year, not less than two weeks, unless the business of said court is sooner disposed of.” Acts of 1874, p. 42. - The-court, during the term at which the defendant was tried, met, as-provided by law, on the first Monday in February, and on the following Friday, by a proper order duly entered upon the minutes,, took a recess until the next Tuesday. It seems almost superfluous, therefore, to say that the regular February term of the court was-not terminated by the order passed during the first week of the term, declaring a recess until a named day in tbe next week. When the court reassembled on the-Tuesday following the recess,, there was simply a continuation of the regular February term of the same; and there was, therefore, no merit in the contention that-the trial of the defendant could not proceed, because it was not the regular term of the court, and no special term had been called to-try the defendant.
In the case now before us the jurors challenged upon the array were not improperly selected, as tales jurors, by the judge to complete a full panel of forty-eight for the trial of a felony case, but they were one of the two panels of twenty-four petit jurors with which the organization of the panel of forty-eight, from which the trial jury was to be selected, began. The statute requires that twenty-four of the forty-eight jurors impaneled in a felony case shall be taken from the two panels of petit jurors. This was done in this case. Panel No. 1, which was challenged when put upon the accused, was one of the panels of petit jurors, the original panel of twelve having been broken by some of the members thereof being excused during the first week of the court, and having been subsequently completed from tales jurors drawn by the judge during that week and summoned by the sheriff. The error was not in beginning the formation of the full panel of forty-eight, from which to select the trial jury, with the two panels of petit jurors, but it was in not having drawn new and separate panels of petit jurors for the second week of the court. As we have seen, however, the array was not challenged upon this ground, but upon the ground, that “the jurors composing panel No. 1 had been summoned for the previous week, and had not been resummoned for the” week when this trial took place. Manifestly, the purpose of the law in requiring separate panels of jurors to be drawn for the first and second weeks of the court is that the same persons shall not serve upon
Judgment affirmed.