Newton v. State

Citations

• 51 Fla. 82

Syllabus

<p>1. An indictment for murder in which, a person is charged as principal in the second degree, though not in the form prescribed by accepted precedents, if the charge is set forth in such language and form as to enable a person of common understanding, to know what was intended, and the person thus charged was not, thereby prejudiced or embarrassed in his trial, and runs no risk, because thereof, of a second indictment for the same offense, is, under the operation of our curative statutes, sufficient to withstand a motion in arrest of judgment.</p> <p>2. Where in a trial for murder a witness testified that he had a conversation with the deceased two or three days after he was shot, and five or six days before he died, in which the deceased said to the witness “Oh, Mr. Cade, I am going to die, Sarah Newton shot me and I am going to die,” to which the witness replied, “I don’t think you are going to die,” and the deceased said to him, “Yes, I know I will,” and the deceased further said that James Newton was fixing to shoot him, and that he was watching Sarah Newton, and Sarah shot him from the side, and that Sarah shot him first, and where it also appears from the testimony of the attending physician that deceased was in a very critical condition, the statements of the deceased to the witness were properly admitted in evidence as dying declarations.</p> <p>3. In charging a jury upon the law of murder, the separate elements essential to constitute the crime should be clearly stated to the jury, and in such manner, as not to render it possible for the jury to think that any disputed fact is thereby assumed to be true.</p> <p>4 When the evidence is such that the jury might reasonably convict the defendants of a lower degree of unlawful homicide than murder -in the first degree, it is erroneous to so charge the jury as practically to restrict them to a verdict of murder in the first degree, or to one of acquittal.</p>