Williams v. State

Citations

• 58 Fla. 138

Syllabus

<p>1. An assignment of error in the following language: “For errors apparent by an examination of tbe record,” presents nothing for consideration by an appellate court.</p> <p>2. A single assignment of error attacking a plurality of rulings of the trial court, whether upon the pleadings, the admission or rejection of evidence, or the granting or refusal of instructions to the jury, will be unavailing, unless all of such rulings so grouped en massee are erroneous, and the determination by an appellate court that one of the rulings so attacked is correct disposes of the assignment.</p> <p>3. In preparing assignments of error each error relied upon should be clearly and distinctly specified and separately assigned.</p> <p>4. The declaration or exclamation of a person who had been shot, within the space of two minutes after the firing of such shot and just prior to his death, which ensued almost immediately from the wound so inflicted upon him, “Oh Lordy, Turner Williams shot me,” is admissible in evidence as part of the res gestae in a prosecution for murder against the person so named by such deceased person.</p> <p>5. Objections to the admissibility of evidence must, as a general thing, be made when it is offered, or its admissibility cannot be assigned as error. In a criminal prosecution an objection to a question after it had been answered comes too late.</p> <p>6. In passing upon an assignment questioning the correctness of the ruling of the trial court in denying a motion for a new trial, which is based upon the sufficiency of the evidence to sustain the verdict, the guiding principle for an appellate court is not what it may think the jury ought to have done, or what such court may think it would have done had it been sitting as a jury in the case, but whether as reasonable men the jury could have found such verdict from the evidence adduced. ' If this question can be answered in the affirmative, the action of the trial court upon such motion should not be distu