State v. Gin Pon

Citations

• 16 Wash. 425
• 47 P. 961
• 1897 Wash. LEXIS 337

Syllabus

<p>JURY — HOW SWORN — CHINESE WITNESSES — OATH — HOMICIDE—PREMEDITATED MALICE — INSTRUCTIONS.</p> <p>Although Laws 1891, p. 59, § 68, provides that the jury in a criminal case shall be sworn well and truly to try the issue between the state and the prisoner at the bar “ according to the evidence,” yet an oath in the following form, “You and each of you do solemnly swear that you will well and truly try [the prisoner named] and true deliverance make between the state and the prisoner at the’ bar,” is not ground for reversal, when they have been charged by the court that their verdict was to be rendered upon the evidence produced in the case.</p> <p>Where an oath has been administered to a Chinese witness according to the custom and religion of his country, the subsequent administration to him of an oath in the form prescribed by our statute is not prejudicial error.</p> <p>In instructing the jury upon premeditated malice in connection with the crime of murder in the first degree, it is not erroneous to charge “ that malice as used in the definition of murder in the first degree is qualified by the words ‘deliberate’ and ‘premeditated,’ and as thus qualified it means a fixed design to unlawfully take human life, accompanied with some degree of reflection thereon, and the act of killing which follows; the premeditation and reflection thereon may take place but a moment before the doing of the act, but both states of mind must have actual existence to make the offense murder in the first degree.” (State v. Rutten, 13 Wash. 203, distinguished].</p>