Holland v. State
Holland v. State
Opinion
[EDITORS' NOTE: THIS PAGE CONTAINS HEADNOTES. HEADNOTES ARE NOT AN OFFICIAL PRODUCT OF THE COURT, THEREFORE THEY ARE NOT DISPLAYED.] *Page 1389
Appellant was indicted for murder in the first degree. He was alleged to have driven his automobile against another automobile in which the deceased was riding. Appellant pleaded not guilty by reason of insanity. A non-unanimous jury found appellant guilty of manslaughter in the first degree. A motion to set aside the verdict as non-unanimous was granted. A second trial was held. At that trial, the appellant was found guilty of manslaughter and sentenced to four years, with six months to be served in the Macon County jail, and the balance on probation.
A car driven by appellant collided with a car occupied by the deceased, Bonita Smith, on a Tuskegee highway. There was evidence at the trial that appellant's car was traveling at a high rate of speed immediately prior to the collision.
Appellant's defense was insanity. He claimed that a "personal Elegance Seminar" he attended in Florida prior to the accident led to his mental illness. Testimony presented indicated that immediately prior to the accident and after the seminar, appellant was alternatingly friendly and disrespectful and, according to his mother, acted strangely. He listened continuously to a tape made at the seminar, suffered from insomnia, heard voices, and drove his car at an excessive speed on at least one occasion prior to the collision herein discussed.
Subsequent to the collision, appellant claimed that he was God. A blood test for *Page 1390 intoxication, taken at the time of the accident, was found to be negative.
The indictment follows the language of the code section and cites the code section itself (§
Appellant's motion to exclude the testimony of witness Fred White was due to be granted. Mr. White testified that he saw an automobile that was traveling "between 65 and 70 miles an hour" run a red light.
He could not recognize or describe the car as appellant's car, and he could not identify the driver of the speeding car as appellant. It is a fact that many cars today are operated at speeds above the legal limit. The testimony was prejudicial and should have been excluded.
However, the error was harmless as evidence of the speed and recklessness of appellant's driving was presented by another witness who positively identified appellant. Thus, Mr. White's testimony was rendered "prejudicially innocuous." Estes v.State,
The first objection sustained was: "When did you first make your information known to the police or district attorney's office?" The objection was sustained on grounds of relevancy.
The second sustained objection was to the question: "When you were in the military, how did you get time off to go to the race track?"
The latitude and extent of cross examination is a matter which of necessity rests largely within the sound discretion of *Page 1391
the trial court, and rulings with respect thereto will not be revised on appeal except in extreme cases of abuse. State v.Howington,
"Q. Assuming that when he came back from Florida from the Personal Elegance Seminar, he had started acting unusual around his family and around all of these people, does it make sense to let him drive then to church?
"DEFENSE ATTORNEY: Object to what other people thought."
The grounds for the objection here stated are improper. The question asked the opinion of the expert witness, and the court was not in error in overruling the objection.
Admission of this testimony was properly within the discretion of the trial court. Crow v. State,
Subsequently, appellant objected to the following charge to the jury: "If any witness has been impeached, then the Jury may disregard that witness's testimony, unless the witness's testimony is corroborated by other evidence not so impeached."
Witness Darlene Baker stated that it was hot on January 6, 1980. This statement was contradicted by a rebuttal witness who stated it was cold on that date. If a witness is impeached only by contradiction, the jury should be instructed to disregard only such portions of the testimony as are controverted and otherwise uncorroborated by other credible and unimpeached witnesses. Stockard v. State,
However, when a witness has willfully sworn falsely, and is therefore shown to be unworthy of belief, the jury is entitled to disregard the entire testimony and may be so charged.Stockard, supra. Our law of evidence makes a clear distinction between contradiction by a subsequent witness as to a certain fact and impeachment by a subsequent witness that shows willful falsehoods have been sworn to under oath in an attempt to alter a just verdict. The former calls for the fact finders to use a selective process of disregarding inaccuracies contradicted, while the latter calls for a broader condemnation of all testimony not corroborated.
The incident of impeachment, herein discussed, is an example of the "contradiction" type. The jury was charged in language that, standing alone, might have been understood as an instruction to discount all of Darlene Baker's testimony. However, the language of the charge was permissive, rather than mandatory. Crumpton v. State,
Importantly, the objection to the charge was improper in that the appellant stated as the specific grounds for his objection that there had "been no evidence of any impeachment of any witness." Evidence clearly meant to impeach part of Darlene Baker's testimony had been introduced. A specific objection waives all other grounds and the court will not be put in error on grounds not assigned. Andrews v. State,
The judgment of the trial court is due to be, and is hereby, affirmed.
AFFIRMED.
All the Judges concur.
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Reference
- Full Case Name
- Earnest A. Holland v. State.
- Cited By
- 13 cases
- Status
- Published