Williams v. State

123 Ala. 39

• Court: Supreme Court of Alabama
• Decided: November 15, 1898
• Status: Published

Opinion

McCLELLAN, C. J.

The general rule is well established in this State that a witness cannot testify to his uncommunicated motives or intentions. There is an exception to the rule to the effect that where a witness is sought to be impeached by showing by him on cross-examination that he has made contradictory statements, lu; may be asked in rebuttal why he made the statements in question.—Johnson v. State, 102 Ala. 1; Campbell v. State, 23 Ala. 44, 76. And where the accused testifies in his own behalf to a particular act of his relevant to the issues, he may on cross-examination be asked what motive prompted him to the act or what intention actuated him — why he did it.—Linnehan v. State, 120 Ala. 293. The question asked on cross-examination of the witness Johnson: “Why did you offer to carry him to your girl’s house after he had paid you to carry him to Patsy’s house?” is within the general rule and not within cither of the exceptions. Johnson was not one of the defendants on trial, nor did this inquiry have' relation to any contradictory statements made by Mm: he in fact had not testified at all about offering “to carry him ■[Munden] to” his girl’s house. The court properly sustained the solicitor’s objection to the question.

• We are unable to say that the statement in the letter written by the defendant Williams a few days after the robbery, in which, money and property to about the amount of $15, nearly all which was money, had been taken, from a place to which he and his co-defendant had fled from the scene of the robbery and where they were under assumed names, that “We have got hold of about $15” was either irrelevant, incompetent or impertinent to the issues- in the case against said Williams, and wé do not think the court erred in allowing the •statement to go to the jury as evidence against that defendant.

Affirmed.