Bassett v. State

Citations

• 44 Fla. 12

Syllabus

<p>1. Where the record shows that defendants were required on a day of the term of the court to plead to an indictment regularly returned by the grand jury against them and it is recited that on that day they were at the bar in custody and having been formally arraigned and plead not guilty to the charge, and thereupon came a jury &e., it sufficiently appears that defendants plead not guilty to the charge preferred against them by the indictment.</p> <p>2. Where there is sufficient in the record to show the presence of the accused in court during the proceedings, the omission of a formal arraignment is waved by pleading to the indictment.</p> <p>3. After a witness for the State had testified to facts showing a foundation for the introduction of dying declarations of a party killed he was asked to state what the deceased said to him, to which question an objection was made on the ground that it might be relevant and it might not, and it was requested that the witness be confined in his testimony to the time of the killing, the court ruled that the witness could state what was said by the deceased as to the homici de an d what directly led up to it, and thereupon the witness narrated a conversation with the deceased which related in part to some matters transpiring befoie the kilhng, defendant moved to strike out all the testimony of the witness as to dying declarations not immediately connected with res gestae of the transaction causing death which was not granted; before the argument of the case the court of its own motion struck out all of the testimony of the witness as to the dying declarations of the deceased except such parts as related directly to the difficulty in which the deceased received his fatal wound, and instructed the jury not to consider in making up their verdict, the testimony stricken out: Held no reversible error in the action of the court.</p> <p>4. A request to charge may properly be refused when it has already been fully covered by the charge