19 Iowa 312 | Iowa | 1865
The case before us is peculiar in its character, and, under its special circumstances, we are of opinion that the facts' offered to be shown by the witness, Mary Devoney (see
In thus holding the evidence admissible, we recognize the general rule that the law will not permit an offender to manufacture evidence in his own favor, and will not therefore allow him to introduce his own declarations when not part of the res gestee. Thus, on an indictment against a prisoner for having counterfeit tools in his possession with intent to use them, he cannot give in evidence his declaration to an artificer at the time he employed him to make such instruments as to the purposes for which he wished them to be made. Commonwealth v. Kent, 6 Metc. 221; other illustrations, Whart. Cr. Law, 240, 259; Shuck v. Vandewenter, 4 G. Greene, 264.
But the present is not such a case. If Conkling, on the 9th day of December, did tell the witness, Mary Devoney, the circumstances of taking the drunken man into-Cady’s, this at once shows Cady to be mistaken when he fixes the time to have been the 14th, and corroborates Conkling’s evidence fixing the time to have been the week previous. The days of miracles and of prophetic insight into the future have passed. Conkling, as early as the 9th, might have conceived the idea of stealing the cattle of his neighbor, Johnson, and have fixed on the night of the 18th to execute the illegal enterprise; but he could not have foreseen that on his return, on the night of the 14th, he would liave met a man in the road near Cady’s, and hence could not by any possibility have manufactured evidence of this character to be thereafter used by him for his own benefit.
The counsel for the appellant maintained the admissibility of this testimony, mainly on the general ground that Conkling was impeached by virtue of his relation to the cause, and that the party offering his evidence had the right to support it by showing that he had, on other occasions, made statements similar to those to which he testified on.
Reversed.