Peadon v. State

Citations

• 46 Fla. 124

Syllabus

<p>Criminal Law — Jurors, Challenges for Cause — Rulings Upon Undisclosed Knowledge of Judge — Evidence — Exceptions Repeating Charges — Impeachment of Witness.</p> <p>1. Where a challenge of a juror for cause is overruled and the defendant subsequently rids himself of the obnoxious juror by a peremptory challenge, such ruling can not avail him in an appellate court, if it is not made to appear that his quota of peremptory challenges was exhausted before the filling of the jury panel.</p> <p>2. It is settled in Florida that the trial judge, in the exercise of a sound discretion, has the right to excuse a juror, although he may be competent to serve as such, and the exercise of such discretion is not error unless abused to the detriment oí a defendant.</p> <p>3. Trial judges should not permit private conferences with them in reference to any question or issue arising in the trial of any criminal cause before them, by the prosecuting attorney or anyone else. Defendants in criminal cases, particularly in capital cases, have the right to an open public trial, and to be fully apprised of everything in any manner affecting their rights in such trial, and it trenches close upon an invasion of such right to have the judge pass upon any question affecting their trial upon undisclosed facts within the secret knowledge of the judge, or secretly communicated to him by others.</p> <p>\\</p> <p>4. Where a State’s witness on direct or cross-examination does not testify anything with reference to a given fact or subject, it is not proper to permit him on cross-examination to be questioned as to what he -may have said to others about such fact or subject; and if the defendant afterwards makes such witness his own, it is not then proper to permit him to question such witness as to what he may have told others about such fact or subject as substantive evidence thereof. What a witness may have said to others, while not under oath, in reference to any given fact is no proof of such fact