62 Ala. 434 | Ala. | 1878
Crime is usually composed of act and intent. Hence, collateral and extrinsic facts sometimes become relevant and material testimony, as shedding light on the motive or intent with which the alleged criminal act was done. But care must be exercised not to open too wide a field for extrinsic exploration. To let in collateral or outside facts, the court must be able to perceive that they tend naturally to elucidate the act or intent charged. Their bearing must point directly to the question in controversy. It is not enough that they furnish material for comparison. To throw open inquiry to this extent would lead to all the evils which result from a multiplication of issues. The attention of the jury should be confined to pertinent and material issues, and no testimony should be allowed which does not appear to shed some light on these. No arbitrary rule, however, can be laid down which will furnish an unerring guide in every conceivable case. Each case must depend, in large degree, on its own attendant facts and circumstances. — 1 Brick. Dig. 505, § 823 et seq.
In the present case, there seems to have been no denial that Hardy’s horse was taken and carried away by the defendant Durrett. The real controversy was, whether the
We are not able to perceive what relevancy the friendly relations between Hardy and Durrett, and their whiskey transactions, had to the offense with which Durrett was charged. Neither can we perceive the materiality of the alleged attempt by revenue officers to arrest Durrett — their, threats to shoot him, nor his abandoned intention to leave the country by railroad, taking the train at Oxford. These are too remote to furnish any just ground for conclusions affecting the guilt or innocence of the accused. The court did not err in ruling out the second conversation held by the prisoner with the witness Wall. There is nothing in the record tending to show that all took place in one continuous conversation. If such was the case, Shortridge could have proved it. He does not appear to have been examined. As they appear in this record, the conversations were separate and distinct, and proof of one by the State did not authorize the defendant to introduce the other as part and parcel of one continuous conversation. — 1 Brick. Dig. 510-11, §§ 875, 881, 883, 884, 889.
It is not usual for courts to interfere and rule out evidence which counsel are willing to let in. Still, if the testimony be immaterial or irrelevant, as the evidence in this case was, such ruling is not an error which would work a reversal. In charging the jury, it should be the aim of the court not to give undue prominence to any phase of fact which the testimony tends to establish. If there be apparent incomplete
But charges, such as we have commented on above, furnish no ground for reversal, merely because of their tendency to mislead. Their mischief may be 'countervailed by explanatory charges asked; or, as we have seen, by a fuller enumer
We do not find any error in the charge of the court. All the enumerated circumstances in the several charges given, were such as the jury should have considered in their deliberations. If their tendency was to give those circumstances prominence, this is not enough to secure a reversal. Explanatory charges might have been asked. The vice of the charge asked for defendant and refused, lies in the fact that it bases the right of acquittal on the honest belief of defendant, at the time at which the horse was taken, that he had authority from the owner of the horse to take and use him to avoid arrest. This ignores the important inquiry whether he took the horse to avoid arrest and under such authority. He might have had such authority, or conceived he had, and yet he may have chosen not to avail himself of that license, but in fact took the horse feloniously; for the purpose of converting him to his own use. For the same reasons the court did not err in giving the affirmative charges, which assert the converse of the proposition contained in the charge asked and refused. The error into which the Circuit Court fell, in commenting on testimony that had been ruled out, was promptly redressed when its attention was called to it. This furnishes no ground of reversal.
The judgment of the Circuit Court is affirmed.