People v. White

LENNON, P. J.

The defendant in this case was informed against for the crime of murder. Upon his trial he was found guilty of murder in the first degree, and- his punishment was fixed by the jury at imprisonment in the state prison for life. Judgment was rendered and entered accordingly, from which and an order denying a new trial defendant has appealed.

No claim is made that the verdict and judgment are not supported by the evidence. The evidence, on the contrary, shows the defendant to have been justly convicted, and therefore the verdict and judgment must stand unless it shall affirmatively appear from the record before us that the defendant was. substantially damaged in his defense by some error or irregularity committed upon the trial in the lower court.

The only points relied upon for a reversal involve the correctness of isolated portions of the trial court’s charge to the jury, and the failure of the trial judge and the defendant to accompany the jury upon an inspection of the premises on which it was claimed the homicide was committed.

[158]

The attack made upon certain of the instructions of the trial court upon the law of self-defense is hypercritical, but even if that were not so, the correctness as a whole of the charge to the jury is never to be tested by singling out and assailing, as is done here, individual instructions which, when detached and isolated from the charge in its entirety, may not contain every qualification, exception, or contingency which may possibly arise under the facts of the particular case on trial. The trial court is not required to repeat, qualify, and explain the essentials of the law applicable to the facts of the case in every individual instruction of its charge to the jury; and that charge will ordinarily be held good and sufficient if, as in the present case, it as a whole clearly, correctly, and without conflict states the law of the case.

With reference to the jury’s view of the premises, the record shows that after the argument of the case was concluded in the lower court counsel for defendant requested that the jury be permitted and directed to visit and view the scene of the crime, in order that they might have a more accurate understanding of the distances designated and delineated upon a map or diagram of the premises which was used in evidence during the trial. The district attorney protested against this procedure upon the ground that it was irregular in this, that its effect would be the introduction of evidence upon the issues involved after the argument of the case to the jury had been completed. The trial court nevertheless granted the request, and thereupon ordered that the jury be conducted in a body in the custody of the sheriff to the scene of the homicide. With the consent of the defendant Detective Ray Starbird was appointed to show the premises to the jury. A deputy sheriff was sworn to take charge of the jury. In his sole custody, and accompanied only by the person appointed to show them the premises, the jury visited and viewed the scene of the crime. It is an undisputed fact, as shown by the record on the motion for a new trial, that neither the trial judge nor the defendant was present with the jury on this occasion. That record further shows that during the short interval of the jury's absence the trial judge and the attorneys for the defendant remained in the courtroom, and that the defendant, at his own request, was taken to the county jail for the purpose of procuring tobácea, where he remained