Commonwealth v. Taylor

Citations

• 78 Pa. Super. 386
• 1922 Pa. Super. LEXIS 123

Syllabus

<p>Criminal law — Procedure—Charge of the court — General exception — Question on appeal.</p> <p>A general exception to the charge of the court, upon the trial of an indictment for felonious entry and larceny, raises, upon appeal, only questions of basic fundamental error.</p> <p>Criminal law — Charge of the court.</p> <p>Where the court, in substance, said that all those connected with the crime, all who conspired or confederated to commit it, and had guilty knowledge of it, were guilty, although not actually present at its consummation, such instructions are without error.</p> <p>Criminal law — Reasonable doubt — Charge of the court — Failure to request further instructions — Substantial reasonable doubt.</p> <p>It is not reversible error in a trial, unless the charge is murder, for the court to instruct as to reasonable doubt in the very language of the law, and stop with that. If further instructions are desired, counsel should so request, but so long as counsel impliedly consent by silence, to the instructions given, they cannot thereafter complain.</p> <p>A doubt, to work an acquittal, must be serious and substantial, and the use by the court of the term “substantial, reasonable doubt” is not of itself error.</p> <p>Criminal law — Evidence—Fighting—Cross-examination.</p> <p>It was not error to refuse to allow cross-examination for the purpose of showing that an accomplice, who testified for the Commonwealth, had been in trouble thirteen years before for fighting. Such evidence, if true, would not affect the veracity of the witness.</p>