Snelling v. State

Citations

• 49 Fla. 34

Syllabus

<p>1. Immaterial and irrelevant questions o,n- cross-examination are properly excluded upon objection duly made, and answers to questions on cross-examination when immaterial are properly stricken on motion.</p> <p>2. An official court reporter for the Circuit Court under the statutes of this State may testify in rebuttal as to evidence given at a preliminary hearing before a committing magistrate when the testimony is given independently of any record or from memory as refreshed by a transcript of notes taken by the witness at the preliminary hearing.</p> <p>3. It is not error to refuse instructions containing propositions already substantially given in charges though couched in different language.</p> <p>4. Where the court has given a proper charge ion the subject of reasonable doubt it is not error to refuse a requested charge that “to justify a jury in finding a verdict of unlawful homicide in any of its degrees against the defendant, each individual juror must be convinced from the evidence for himself that the defendant is so guilty.”</p> <p>5. In a prosecution for murder it is not error to add to a charge on the subject of self defense requested by the defendant the following: “Provided he had used all reasonable means within his power, consistent with his own safety, to avert the danger and avoid the necessity of taking P.’s life.”</p> <p>6. In -a prosecution for murder where the question of self defense was raised by the testimony the court refused to give the following charge as requested by the defendant: “If you should believe from tlie evidence that the defendant was free from fault in bringing on the difficulty, and was not .the- aggressor therein, and that he was assaulted by the deceased, or by the deceased -and another who were armed with deadly weapons, and that such assault was made under such circumstances that it reasonably appeared to the defendant that an ordinarily cautious and prudent man that he was in danger of death or great bodily harm a