Miera v. Territory of New Mexico

Citations

• 13 N.M. 192
• 81 P. 586

Syllabus

<p>SYLLABUS.</p> <p>1. This court cannot assume that the defendant did not ‘have a trial hy an impartial jury, to which he was entitled under the Sixth Amendment of the Constitution of the United States, and Section 3756 of the Compiled Laws of New Mexico, because those summoned as talesmen to complete the panel from which the trial jury was selected, included a smaller percentage of men of the defendant’s race than the district from which they were selected contained, or because persons of the defendant’s race living in the immediate vicinity of the court house in which the trial took place and who were legally qualified for jury duty were not selected, while some of another race living at much greater distance were selected and summoned to complete the panel.</p> <p>2.The allegation in behalf of the defendant that there was discrimination against those of his race in the selection of the panel from which the jury for.'his trial was made 0 up was in violation of the Fourteenth Amendment of the Constitution of the United States, was not sustained by any evidence introduced or tendered.</p> <p>3.An experienced physician who held an inquest on the body of the woman with whose murder the defendant was charged was properly permitted to testify that, in hi® opinion she could not have inflicted on herself the wound of which she died, and that she was sitting down when the shot was fired.</p> <p>4. Evidence of an assault with a pistol by the defendant on the woman with whose murder he was charged, made about three years prior to her death, was properly admitted.</p> <p>• 4. It was not. error to give the jury the entire statute description of murder in the third degree, although a portion of it could, on the evidence, have no relevancy to the case at bar.</p> <p>5. The jury was properly instructed that the remarks of counsel were not to be regarded as evidence and that their verdict must be founded isolely on the evidence and the law as given by the court.</p> <p>6. Express