40 Ga. App. 251 | Ga. Ct. App. | 1929
We will enlarge upon the 2d headnote only. The 7th ground of the amendment to the motion for a new trial is as follows: “The defendant, Joseph J. Edenfield Jr., in his statement, submitted to the jury his version of the substance of the testimony given by certain witnesses for the defendant, George T.Edenfield, on-the previous trial of George T. Edenfield, charged with murder under the same indictment, to wit: witnesses Dr. C. Thompson, Madison Mills, James A. Dixon Jr., and others. The. State, in rebuttal, swore as a witness P. W. Martin, the official court reporter, and submitted to said P. W. Martin a brief of the testimony in the trial of George T. Edenfield, prepared by him irom stenographic notes made by him during the trial of George T.
We think that it was error to admit the testimony of Sullivan set out in the 7th ground of the motion and that of Joyner set out in the 8th ground of the motion, because no foundation had been laid in either instance for the introduction of such evidence as provided by section 5881 of the Civil Code and section 1052 of the Penal Code of 1910. In discussing the rule laid down in § 5881
As a new trial must necessarily follow the foregoing rulings, we deem it advisable to call attention to the fact that the defendant should not be allowed to read to the jury “a prepared statement, prepared by his counsel” in which is quoted, some of it verbatim, as taken down by the stenographer, the evidence of certain witnesses in a different case even though growing .out of the same transaction, especially without preliminary proof of the genuineness of such evidence. In Woodward v. State, 5 Ga. App. 449 (4) (63 S. E. 573), Chief Judge Hill said: “The defendant, in making his statement to the jury, started to read certain letters, which ho stated he had received from the female alleged to have been seduced by him. The solicitor-general.objected to the introduction of the letters in this manner, and the court sustained the objection, but stated to the defendant that he might state that he got the letters, and state their contents, but could not read the original letters as a part of his statement; that he could not make profert of the letters to sustain his statement. The defendant thereupon stated that he had received the letters, and that they were written by the female alleged to have been seduced by him, stated their contents fully to the jury, and in this way got the full benefit of the letters. Speak-for myself, I think the judge in his ruling was as favorable to the defendant as the law required him to be. While the statute giving to the defendant the right of making a statement in his defense is unlimited, except by what he himself may consider proper to state in his defense, yet I do not think that it was ever intended by the. statute to permit the defendant to introduce documentary evidence as a part of his statement, without preliminary proof as to the genuineness of such evidence, or at least without submitting such documentary evidence to the State’s counsel for examination. . . But without discussing this question further, the ruling by the court on this point is fully sustained by the Supreme Court in
Judgment reversed,.