Johnson v. State
Johnson v. State
Opinion of the Court
Defendant’s counsel make some 48 assignments of error on the record, and note 57 different exceptions to the ruling of the trial court on the margin of the transcript, but file no brief in support of the errors assigned or exceptions noted.
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It was held in Fuller v. State, 117 Ala. 36, 23 South. 688 (on a trial under an indictment for murder), that it was proper to permit a witness to testify that he heard the defendant “cursing” at the time of the altercation between him and the deceased which resulted in the homicide, and that the precise language *196 used could be elicited, if desired, on cross-examination. This holding in Fuller’s Case is approved and affirmed in the case of Pope v. State, 174 Ala. 63, 78, 57 South. 245.
The term “cursing” has a fixed and definite meaning that is well understood and only requires resort to common understanding for a definition of the term. There is no difficulty in the way of understanding the meaning of the phrase in accordance with common, everyday experience. In a dictionary sense, the word “curse” or “cursed” has a comprehensive and exact meaning, embracing, generically, “malediction,” “imprecation,” “execration,” and is used as a hyperbolical expletive. — Century Dictionary. In common use, it is susceptible of but one meaning, and “where usqd by one towards another, it is intended to convey hate and detestation and as an invocation for harm and injury.”— Irwin v. Irwin, 2 Okl. 180, 37 Pac. 548, 550.
See also, 2 Worse and Phrases, p. 1796.
A witness may not, of course, usurp the function of the jury, or court, and state his conclusion as to the very facts at issue between the parties; but he may, without offending against the general rule as to opinion evidence or stating mere conclusions, state his judgment or give his conclusion as to the existence of certain facts, either separately or collectively, where the statement calls for no more than the mere shorthand rendering of collective facts. We think the witnesses should have been permitted to answer the question eliciting testimony as to their having heard the deceased “cursing” the mother and sister of the defendant just prior to and at the time of the altercation between deceased and defendant which resulted in the homicide as a fact within their knowledge, and that the court’s action in refusing to permit the introduction of this evidence, and in excluding testimony of a similar import on motion of the state, constitutes error necessitating a reversal of the case. Such testimony would be but the statement of a fact which they could well know with certainty, and the witnesses could have been cross-examined as to their knowledge of the particular words used, and the means and accuracy of their knowledge. — Fuller v. State, supra; Pope v. State, supra; Bennett v. Fail, 26 Ala. 605.
Other rulings on the evidence are free from error, or are rendered non-injurious by the subsequent action of the court in-admitting competent and excluding inadmissible evidence.
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For the rulings of the trial court on the evidence that we have pointed out, the case must be reversed.
Reversed and remanded.
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