People v. Teshara

BEATTY, C. J.

This is a companion case to that of Manuel Amaya, just decided,

ante,

p. 531. A few days after the conviction of Amaya, this defendant was tried upon a separate information, accusing him of the murder of Loucks, and he was found guilty of murder in the second degree. His appeal, also, is from the judgment and from an order denying a new trial. In many respects the points made in support of the two appeals are the same, and what has been said in Amaya’s case need not be repeated here; but Teshara has some exceptions, not covered by the decision in that case, which we will proceed to consider.

1. In this case, as in the other, it became necessary to summon talesmen in order to complete the jury, and the sheriff and coroner both being disqualified by bias, the special

venire

was issued to one F. K. Roberts, who had served as elisor in Amaya’s case. Upon his return of the

venire,

a challenge to the panel was interposed by the defendant, upon the ground of bias of the elisor; and in support of the challenge it was shown that he had been present in court, off and on, during the trial of Amaya’s case, and all the time during the last two days of the trial; that he then heard read in evidence the dying declaration of Loucks, and the testimony of Patrick Morrissey,— the most direct and important evidence against Teshara; but, in response to questions by the district attorney, he stated that he had neither formed nor expressed an opinion as to the guilt or innocence of the defendant; that he had no bias against him, and that if he were a juror in the case he could try it fairly, according to the law and the evidence. Upon this showing, the challenge to the panel was overruled; and if the question was merely whether the ruling was sustained by the evidence, it could not be said, as matter of law, that there was no evidence to support it; but there is a very different question raised by the defendant’s exceptions to a number of rulings of the court excluding evidence offered in support of the challenge. Many of the questions addressed to the elisor by counsel for defendant, to which objections by the people were sustained, called for evidence clearly relevant to the question of bias, and

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