Territory of New Mexico v. McGinnis

Citations

• 10 N.M. 269

Syllabus

<p>syllabus by the court.</p> <p>1. Criminal Law — Selection of Jury — Section 9 of chapter 66, Laws of 1899, prescribes the manner in which talesmen shall be selected, and repeals section 941 of the Compiled Laws of 1897.</p> <p>2. Murder — Practice—Indictment—Conviction—One who upon the evidence is found to be guilty of murder, as an accessory at the fact, and therefore a principal in the second degree, may be convicted under an indictment charging him as principal in the first degree.</p> <p>3- Id. — An indictment sufficiently charging murder in the first degree will support a conviction of murder in the second degree.</p> <p>4. Criminal Law — Evidence.—Where there is a question whether an act was done by any person, any fact which supplies a motive for such an act is deemed to be relevant, and this is true although it may tend to show the accused guilty of another offense than the one charged.</p> <p>5. Murder — Conspiracy.—Where, upon a trial for murder, it appeared that the defendant, when the crime was committed, was in company with other persons, and the evidence left in douht whether the fatal shot was fired by the defendant or by any one of his companions, the testimony for the prosecution tending to prove, however, that the defendant participated with his companions in the resistance of arrest which resulted in the homicide; and where there was evidence tending to prove that the defendant and the other persons had, prior to the time of the homicide acted in consort as conspirators in the commission of a felonious assault upon and robbery of a railroad train, and had thereafter been for several days associated in a common endeavor to escape apprehension by flight. — Held: That instructions by the court to the effect that if the jury believed the defendant to be a party fo a conspiracy or common design to make violent opposition to arrest, and that in the carrying out of such conspiracy or common design the homicide in question was perpetrated by one of his