Pugh v. State

Citations

• 55 Fla. 150

Syllabus

<p>Criminal Law—Evidence—Verdict—Misspelling In—Proof of Premeditated Design—Failure to Give Instructions— When Assignable as Error.</p> <p>i. If at the time of the propounding of excluded questions to a witness the relevancy and pertinency of the testimony sought to be elicited thereby is not made to appear the- exclusion of such questions at that time will not be adjudged by an appellate court to be error, particularly where the party propounding them is afterwards, during the progress of the trial, and after the relevancy of the excluded evidence has been made apparent, afforded an opportunity of re-propounding such ex- . eluded questions and fails to do so.</p> <p>.2. While verdicts, particularly in criminal cases, should be certain, and impart a definite meaning,' free from ambiguity, yet any words that convey beyond a reasonable doubt the meaning and intention of the jury are sufficient. All fair intendments should be made to sustain them. If the intention is thereby clearly manifested bad spelling or faulty grammar will not vitiate them. The rule of idem sonans is applicable in construing verdicts. The following -verdict: “We the jury find the defendant guilty of murder in the first dr gee,”—Held, to be sufficiently certain, and to clearly indicate the intention of the jury, and to be so patently a misspelling of the intended word “Degree” as to be self-correcting on its face.</p> <p>3. Though a group of letters used by a jury in an attempt to spell a necessary word in their verdict, fails to correctly spell any word known to the English language, and, if taken by themselves, convey no intelligible meaning, yet, when such group of letters is considered in connection with the other intelligible words used in the verdict, if no room for reasonable doubt is left that the jury intended thereby to spell the word necessary to the validity of their verdict, such verdict should be upheld.</p> <p>4. Premeditated design, in trials for murder, may be established by circ