State v. Douette

Citations

• 31 Wash. 6
• 71 P. 556
• 1903 Wash. LEXIS 576

Syllabus

<p>PERJURY — SUFFICIENCY OF INFORMATION — ALLEGATION OF JURISDICTION.</p> <p>Under Bal. Code, § 6857, which provides that it is sufficient in an information for perjury to set forth the substance of the controversy in respect to which the crime was committed, and in what court or before whom the oath alleged to be false was taken and that the court or person before whom it was taken had power to administer it, and under art. 4, § 6, of the constitution, which vests the superior court with original jurisdiction in cases amounting to felony, the failure of the information to specially allege that the court had jurisdiction of the cause of action in which the alleged perjury was committed would not render the information bad, where sufficient was alleged to show it was a case of felony on trial in the superior court, thereby raising a prima facie presumption of jurisdiction.</p> <p>SAME-MATERIALITY OF FALSE TESTIMONY.</p> <p>Where an information charging perjury alleges that defendant was duly sworn as a witness, and, being so sworn, “it then and there, upon the trial of said issue, became and was a material inquiry,” etc., and that defendant feloniously, falsely, and contrary to such oath, deposed and swore falsely to such material facts, it sufficiently avers the materiality of the testimony and that defendant testified falsely thereto after he was sworn.</p> <p>SAME-INSTRUCTIONS-DUTY OF JURY TO DISREGARD VERDICT IN OTHER CAUSE.</p> <p>The failure of the court in a perjury case to charge the jury not to consider as any evidence of the guilt of defendant the verdict and judgment included in the record of the cause in which the alleged false testimony had been given, and which record had been admitted in evidence in the perjury case as matter of inducement, could not be urged as error, where defendant had not requested specific instructions upon that feature of the case.</p> <p>SAME-HARMLESS ERROR.</p> <p>The action of the court in submitting the question of the materi