Lovett v. State

Citations

• 29 Fla. 356

Syllabus

<p>1. It is indispensable to a legal conviction of a defendant on trial for murder that lie should be personally present in court during the trial, and is likewise indispensable that the record proper of the trial, as distinguished from the bill of exceptions, shall show such personal presence. Presence by an attorney is not sufficient, nor is it sufficient that a bill of exceptions shows presence in person, where the record proper does not show personal presence.</p> <p>.'2, Personal presence at the time of the trial can not be inferred from the express statement in the record proper of such presence at the time of the sentence, where the expression of the record as to the trial is that the defendant’s presence on the trial was by his attorney.</p> <p>3. It is not the purpose or office of bills of exception to provide a new and optional or substitutional mode of making a record, or other legal evidence, of such steps or proceedings in a cause as, at the time of the institution of these bills, were set forth in and shown by the ordinary record. These bills are records of proceedings in the trial court which do not appear in its ordinary record, and they are made, not as a basis of any further proceeding in that court, but for the purpose of reviewing in the appellate court rulings of the former court excepted to as erroneous in law.</p> <p>4. Where the record proper of a trial for murder does not show an arraignment of the prisoner, or otherwise show his personal presence in court prior to his being sentenced, but shows that at the trial he “ came ” by his attorney, and then shows that at the time of being sentenced he came again in his own proper person and attended by his counsel, it is not sufficient evidence of, and will not support a conviction of murder ; and the deficiency is not supxfiied, or the defect cured, by the bill of exceptions showing that he was present at the trial in person and by attorney.</p> <p>•5. That a record entry to the effect that the ju