State v. . FullerState v. . Fuller
- Reporters:
- ,
- Before:
- Avery
The prisoner presented affidavits, charging improper conduct on the part of the jury and of the officer who had them in charge, and showing, or tending to show, bias on the part of T.C. Tew, one of the jurors, and from said affidavits the court found the following facts:
That eleven of the jurors were shaved by one of their number, in their room in Saturday evening, the third day of the trial, and the other (a colored man) was carried to a barber shop in town, about 200 yards from the room in which the remaining eleven jurors were. The officer, locking the door of said room, put the key in his pocket and accompanied the colored juror to the barber shop and back, and when he returned, found everything as he left it. They were supplied with two quarts of whiskey on Saturday afternoon. One quart was first bought for Sunday, the jurors themselves furnishing the money and the officer buying it for them. Every juror drank out of it; each juror took one drink, consuming one quart. One quart was first bought, and some time after, same afternoon, the other quart. The jurors played cards, from timе to time, pending the trial, the cards being furnished by the proprietor of the boarding-house. The friends of the deceased had been boarding at the house to which the jury were carried, but they did not remain there after the jury were carried there; that on another occasion the officer took one of the jurors, who was troubled with his bowels, to a back lot to obey a call of nature, and at the request of the juror, who was complaining of pain, carried him into a saloon, where the juror and officer each took a drink with him, the remaining eleven being left in the room, and the sаme locked up; that on another occasion one of the jurors requested the officer to take him to a livery stable, not far off, in order to remove his horse to another stable, and the officer did so, and also allowed the colored juror to go with them, leaving the other ten jurors locked up in the room until they returned; that the officer allowed the jurors to use and read the Wilmington Messenger, from day to day, during the trial, which contained what purported
The above facts are found by the court upon the affidavits filed by the prisoner and the affidavit of E. M. Waddell, the officer of the jury, which he filed in answer to the rule served upon him for contempt, in violation of his duty as such officer, and which he asked might be reаd in response to the affidavits as to his conduct.
It was agreed between counsel on both sides that the officer might take the jury to church on Sunday, which he did. This is the only agreement made by counsel as to the jury. HENRY R. BRYAN, Judge Presiding.
The officer, answering a rule, was fined by the court $150 and sentenced to jail for thirty days. Upon the sworn testimony of his physician that imprisonment would imperil his life, he being an old and feeble man, and further testimony of his not having over $50 in property, the fine was stricken out and the judgment suspended.
HENRY R. BRYAN, Judge, etc.
Facts found by the judge, and his ruling thereon, entered of record:
The prisoner, after the verdict, offered the affidavits of S.C. Godwin and J. R. West, tending to show that the juror had expressed an opinion, which affidavits were as follows:
S.C. Godwin, being duly sworn, says: That on Monday, 22 January, 1894, late in the afternoon, affiant had a conversation with J. C. Tew and J. R. West relative to the trial of the Fuller case, in which conversation affiant asked said Tew (who was one of the jurors who tried the case) and West, “What are they doing in the Fullеr Case?” to which West said, “They are doing nothing.” Affiant then asked them if they were summoned on thevenire, or if the venire was summoned, to which West replied, “No, and they had better not summon us unless they want him (Fuller) hung — had they, John Curt?” (addressing Tew). J. C. Tew then said, “You bet not.”
J. R. West, being duly sworn, says: That on Monday of the first week of this term of the court he was at the house of his uncle, S.C.
Upon which foregoing affidavits prisoner asked the court to find that the juror, Tew, was not an indifferent juror at the time he was accepted by the defendant. The court declined to so find, being of the opinion that affidavits were not sufficiently strong.
H. R. BRYAN, Judge, etc.
The single exception to the charge, which is discussed in the opinion, is set forth therein in full. From the judgment pronounced upon a verdict of guilty the prisoner appealed. After all of his peremptory challenges had been exhausted, the juror, Hawley, wаs passed by the State and tendered to and accepted by the prisoner. As the clerk was about to swear him, he asked to be excused, upon the ground that he was an intimate and lifelong friend to the prisoner and connected with him by marriage. Further investigation developed the fact that no relationship, either by consanguinity or affinity, existed between the prisoner and the juror, but that a first cousin of the prisoner had married the juror‘s second cousin. After correctly ruling that no sufficient cause of challenge had been shown, and after it had been made to appear thаt the juror had previously asked the counsel for the prosecution to excuse him, but without assigning any reason for making the request, the court overruled the objection of the prisoner and permitted the State to challenge the juror peremptorily.
The statute (
After the rendition of the verdict, affidavits were filed, tending to show misconduct on the part of the jury actually impaneled, and of the officer who had charge of them. The judge found the facts bearing upon this subject, and his denial of the motion on that ground is not reviewable here. S. v. Best, 111 N.C. 643. But two affidavits were filed tending to show that one of the jurors who was chosen (John C. Tew) declared on his voir dire that he had not formed and expressed the opinion that the prisoner was guilty; whereas, before he was summoned on the special venire, he had said, in effect, that it would
It is immaterial whether the court started out to find the facts at the request of the prisoner‘s counsel оr on its own motion. It would have been a work of supererogation to request the judge to do what he was already doing voluntarily. But the principle announced in the recent case of S. v. DeGraff, 113 N.C. 696, and S. v. Best, supra, must not be misunderstood. If the judge, of his own motion or on request of the prisoner‘s counsel, starts out with the avowed purpose of finding the facts, and then states as a conclusion of law that certain affidavits, if admitted to be true, are not sufficient to call for the exercise of his power, instead of eliminating the facts from the affidavits, it has never been held by this Court that a prisoner who is not in fault, under such сircumstances, is precluded from excepting to a mistake of law
In defining murder in the first degree the court said: “The killing being admitted, and nothing else appearing or proved, the court charges you that no presumption is raised that it is murder in the first degree, and unless the circumstances show beyond a reasonable doubt that there was a deliberate, premeditated, preconceived design to take life, it is murder in the second degree. The act should not only be wilful,
In the case of Romans v. State, 41 Wis. 312, the Court approved the instruction that the jury would find the defendant guilty of murder
Where the presiding judge, in defining the two degrees of murder, inadvertently instructs the jury that the fact of killing with a deadly weapon, when admitted, raises the presumption or justifies the inference that there was premeditation instead of malice, it is necessarily an incurable error. No subsequent proposition inconsistent with that can be held to have removed the erroneous impressiоn fastened on the minds
The passage of the act of 1893 marks an era in the judicial history of the State. As far as we can ascertain, every other State had previously divided the common-law kind of murder into two classes. The theory upon which this change has been made is that the law will always be executed more faithfully when it is in accord with an enlightened idea of justice. Public sentiment has revolted at the thought of placing on a level in the courts one who is provoked by insulting words (not deemed by the common law as any provocation whatever) to kill another with a deadly weapon, with him who waylays and shoots another in order to rob him of his money, or poisons him to gratify an old grudge. So long as artificial proof of malice is allowed to raise the presumption of murder, this new law will fail to accomplish the object for which it was framed. Elsewhere the courts have generally followed the lead of Pennsylvania, and we, too, have adopted the interpretation given by her courts to the law which our Legislature has borrowed from her statutes. It is not the severity of laws, but the certainty of their execution, that accomplishes the end that should be always in view in enforcing them. Heretofore, public opinion has approved and often applauded the conduct of juries in disrеgarding the instructions of judges as to the technical weight to be given to the use of a deadly weapon. The consequence has been that, a lax administration of the law being tolerated in such cases, other juries have constituted themselves judges of the law as well as of the facts, when proof has shown a more heinous offense. The experience of a few years will probably demonstrate here as
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