Swain v. State

135 S.E. 187, 162 Ga. 777, 1926 Ga. LEXIS 279
CourtSupreme Court of Georgia
DecidedSeptember 25, 1926
DocketNo. 5021
StatusPublished
Cited by44 cases

This text of 135 S.E. 187 (Swain v. State) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Supreme Court of Georgia primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
Swain v. State, 135 S.E. 187, 162 Ga. 777, 1926 Ga. LEXIS 279 (Ga. 1926).

Opinions

Russell, C. J.

1. The plaintiff in error was tried for the offense of murder, it being alleged in the indictment that he killed J. Walter Johnson on December 16, 1924, by shooting him with a pistol.- The defendant was found guilty, without recommendation. He made a motion for a new trial, which was overruled. He excepted upon various grounds hereinafter stated. Without recapitulation of the evidence, which has been carefully considered, it can not be held that the evidence in behalf of the prosecution is insufficient to authorize the conviction of the accused; though there was testimony in behalf of the defendant which, if credible to the jury, would have sustained his plea of self-defense and would have authorized the jury to acquit him. So it can not be held that the judge erred in overruling the three general grounds of the motion for a new trial, unless it appears from the remaining assignments of error that'the verdict of guilty was induced by errors in the trial, as alleged in the special [780]*780grounds of the motion for a new trial. Twenty-four grounds are contained in the amendment to the original motion. For the sake of convenience, and following the subdivision made by counsel for plaintiff in error, we shall group some of the assignments of error, and consider the case as presenting in one way or another thirteen reasons why the plaintiff in error, according to his insistence, should be granted another trial. In the first special ground of the motion complaint is made that certain jurors were disqualified, because in answer to the voir dire question, “Are you conscientiously opposed to capital punishment?” they replied that they “were, in case of circumstantial evidence.” As qualified by the note of the trial judge this ground of the motion, not being approved, presents nothing for our consideration as to one of the jurors. This confines our inquiry as to whether there was error in standing aside for cause the jurors Parmenter, Holmes, and Long, because they answered they were opposed to capital punishment on circumstantial evidence. The court did not err in its ruling. Where the capital punishment can be inflicted, a juror who is opposed to capital punishment is incompetent to try such a case. The exact point was expressly ruled in Smith v. State, 146 Ga. 76 (90 S. E. 713); and in Mickens v. State, 149 Ga. 185 (99 S. E. 779), it was held: “On the trial of one indicted for murder the court properly held a person incompetent who, in reply to the statutory question on the voir dire, testified: CI am opposed to capital punishment in cases of circumstantial evidenced Neither the trial judge nor any one else can anticipate with any degree of certainty the exact character of all the evidence that may be developed and submitted on a trial. 24 Cyc. 310, and cases cited in notes 96 and 97.” The ruling in Bell v. State, 91 Ga. 15 (16 S. E. 207), has no bearing upon the point sub judice.

2. In the second and fifteenth special grounds of the motion the plaintiff in error insists that the court erred in admitting the .evidence of William Branan and Mrs. Gregory, as set forth in said grounds, for the reason that this evidence was immaterial, irrelevant, and prejudicial to the defendant, and tended to show a separate and distinct transaction or crime for which the defendant was not then on trial. It is argued that the testimony of William Branan (second ground) and Mrs. Gregory (fifteenth ground) to the effect that after the defendant shot the deceased he backed [781]*781his car out and went rapidly to 17 Hill Park, and, when he got up there, without a word he shot his wife twice and shot his wife’s mother and then tried to shoot himself, was “illegally admitted to the jury and virtually put him on trial before the jury for other and separate and distinct and independent crimes in no way connected with the crime with which he was on trial, and could not be judged proper evidence either for the purpose of showing motive or of identifying the defendant. There was no question as to the identity of the person who killed the deceased, . . as there was no issue on this point and there was no denial by the defendant that he killed Johnson, and this evidence could in no sense be urged as proper evidence by which the jury could infer motive.” The testimony of the officer, Branan, was admissible, if for no other reason, as a part of the res gestae of the arrest. Arnold v. State, 131 Ga. 494 (62 S. E. 806). It is questionable whether the assignment of error properly presents the complaint of plaintiff in error; because it is not error, where testimony is objected to as a whole and any part of it is admissible, to overrule the objection as not properly made, for the court is not required to sift the wheat from the chaff. But assuming that the assignment of error is well made, it seems clear to us that under the rulings in Farmer v. State, 100 Ga. 41 (2) (28 S. E. 26), Frank v. State, 141 Ga. 243 (2 a-c) (80 S. E. 1016), and Williams v. State, 152 Ga. 498 (110 S. E. 286), the testimony objected to was relevant and admissible upon the subject of motive. Arnold v. State, supra; Glover v. State, 137 Ga. 82 (72 S. E. 926).

3. In the third special ground of the motion the plaintiff in error-complains because the court, on motion of the solicitor-general, excluded the testimony of J. L.- Robinson, a witness for the defendant, who had testified: “I had several conversations with Johnson. I had a eonversataion with him about a money-matter. He told me he made away with right smart of Swain’s money, and not to say anything to him about it.” It is insisted that this evidence was admissible for the purpose of explaining “the mind, motive, and attitude of Johnson, the deceased, towards Swain, the defendant, and it was for the jury to say what the deceased meant when he-told the witness that ‘he made away with right smart .of .Swainls- money and not to say anything to him about it.’ ” Plaintiff in error insists, that, “in view of the thread that ran through [782]*782the entire testimony with reference to the intimacy between the deceased and the wife of the defendant, this evidence was proper and admissible to throw any and all light possible on this relationship that existed between deceased and defendant’s wife, and certainly was this evidence permissible if such intimacy had any connection with the homicide.” We think the evidence was correctly excluded as irrelevant. As ruled in Sasser v. State, 129 Ga. 541, 547 (59 S. E. 255), “under the facts of this case, proof of bad feeling of the deceased toward the defendant alone would not be admissible. In order to make it admissible, it would have to be shown that the defendant knew of it.”

4. In the fourth ground of the motion for a new trial the plaintiff in error complains that Miss Virginia Fowler was permitted to testify: “Mr. Johnson was a very special friend of mine. Prior to the homicide he had been going with me constantly. At the time he was killed I was going to school at Lanier High School. He used to go to school nearly every morning with me, and in the afternoon he would meet me on Spring Street if he was late, and if he was early he would go to Mrs. Gregory’s and stay until I came. The Gregory’s back door goes into our back door; the lots back together. He frequently waited for me at the Gregory home, except on Saturdays and Sundays, when he would come to my house. It cut off about two blocks for me to go by the Gregory home.

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Bluebook (online)
135 S.E. 187, 162 Ga. 777, 1926 Ga. LEXIS 279, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/swain-v-state-ga-1926.