53 Tenn. 181 | Tenn. | 1871
delivered the opinion of the court.
In an action for malicious prosecution, to charge the jury, “you may give what is called vindictive damages, that is, such damages as will satisfy the highly excited feelings of the party injured,” is clearly error. While a jury may give vindictive damages, such damages are not to be measured by the “feelings” of the plaintiff as defined by the Circuit Judge, but are to be such damages as a reflecting and dispassionate jury investigating and weighing the charge out of which the civil suit grows, and its attending circumstances, may conclude are proper and right. If
Under the rule laid down by the Circuit Court, the plaintiff may say that any given amount will satisfy him, and there is no mode by which a jury can avoid returning that amount as their verdict, and the province of the jury as conservators of law and administrators of right, is utterly overthrown and the prejudices and passions of the plaintiff substituted.
The jury without that regard to the highly excited feelings of the plaintiff imposed by the charge in this case, .must take the facts and surrounding circumstances as developed by the evidence, and from these alone determine whether the plaintiff is entitled to any, or how much, damages.
The oath of a grand juror that he will keep secret the State’s counsel, his fellows’, and his own, is intended to protect the grand jury from the interference of persons not of its body, persons who may, either for themselves or friends, be interested in the action of the jury in finding or ignoring bills before them, or that may come before them, and who, if it were
No higher obligation can rest upon a citizen than that of a grand juror, and unless his deliberations and inquiries are protected from all influences, except those derived from legitimate sources of information, the institution becomes one of oppression and tyranny. Hence the earnest concern of the law to keep pure the action, thought, and conversation of grand jurors while acting as such.
Another reason for the obligation of secrecy, is, that a party against whom proceedings may be pending, may learn thereof, and by escaping, avoid the punishment due his crime.
"When these ends have been accomplished, the entire purpose of- secrecy is effected, and if at a subsequent period it shall become necessary to the attainment or justice and the vindication of truth and right in a judicial tribunal, that the conduct and testimony of prosecutors and witnesses shall be inquired into, there is no reason why it should not be done. It is contemplated at the preferment and fin.ding of an indictment or presentment, that the evidence upon which it is found will be relied on at the trial. This being so, if it shall also be that the mouth of the grand juror is forever closed, a door to undetected and un-whipt perjury may be opened, for it may be that a corrupt prosecutor or witness may find that although
On the other hand and to prevent the punishment of the innocent, it has been a long established rule of practice in this State that a prosecutor or witness may be asked whether he made , certain statements before the grand jury, and that a grand juror may be called to contradict him; and if he may be called as to a material fact on the one side, for a like good reason- he may be called for a similar purpose on the other.
On objection made to the reading of a deposition for want of notice, the onus of proof of the notice is on the party insisting upon its existence.
Reverse the judgment.