State v. Bokien

Citations

• 14 Wash. 403
• 44 P. 889
• 1896 Wash. LEXIS 381

Syllabus

<p>FALSE PRETENCE — DESCRIPTION OP OFFENSE IN INFORMATION — EVIDENCE — NAMES OF WITNESSES — JURY — SELECTION AND CERTIFICATION— EXAMINATION OF JUROR — ARGUMENT OF COUNSEL.</p> <p>In a prosecution for obtaining goods under false pretences the information is sufficient, if it appears therefrom, though not by direct and positive averment, that a party was induced to part with his property by reason of certain specified false pretences.</p> <p>County commissioners are, by the giving of a proper bond, entitled to hold the office and to discharge its duties, including the selection of the list of jurors, although the clerk of the superior court of the county who, under Laws 1893, p. 177, is chargeable with the duty of passing upon the sufficiency of the bonds may have merely indorsed thereon that such bonds were “ approved as to sufficiency of sureties.”</p> <p>Mere informalities in drawing, selecting and certifying a jury list by the county commissioners are not ground of challenge to the panel, if it appears that the commissioners selected the list and caused it to he transmitted to the clerk of the court.</p> <p>On the examination of a juror on his voir dire it is not proper to ask the juror the question: “After hearing all the evidence and the testimony and the instructions of this court in the cause, if there yet remains in your mind a reasonable doubt regarding the guilt of the defendant would you return a verdict of not guilty in his favor ? ”</p> <p>The court may permit the indorsement of. names of additional witnesses on the information during the course of the trial, in furtherance of justice, which action, in case of surprise, would entitle defendant to a reasonable continuance for the purpose of meeting the unexpected evidence.</p> <p>In a prosecution for obtaining goods under false pretences by the giving of a check upon a bank in which the defendant had no funds, it is error to allow the prosecution to introduce testimony of other checks having been given by