Baldwin v. State
Baldwin v. State
Opinion of the Court
[2} The indictment charged robbery in a single count, and the jury in their verdict found defendant “guilty as charged.” It is true that the charge of robbery contained the lesser charge of larceny, of which, in a proper state of the evidence, the defendant might have been convicted (Morris v. State, 97 Ala. 82, 12 South. 276), but in that event it wmuld have been necessary for the verdict to designate the offense for which conviction was had; such a verdict operating as an acquittal of the graver offense charged. The verdict in this case cannot be misconstrued, and the sentence in pursuance of the punishment fixed by the jury was correct.
Turner v. State, 40 Ala. 21, cited by appellant, presented a very different question. In that case the ruling was simply that on the trial of an indictment under a section of the Code of 1852 it was necessary that the jury fix the punishment, and that the verdict rendered was void for its failure in that particular. Nor are homicide cases in point, for in them the statute requires that the jury ascertain the degree of the crime, and this requirement has been held to be mandatory even where the jury finds the defendant guilty of murder in the first degree. Howerton v. State, 191 Ala. 13, 67 South. 979. And so even where the charge is one of murder committed by means of poison which can be nothing but murder in the first degree. Johnson v. State, 17 Ala. 618, 627.
Affirmed.
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Reference
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- Baldwin v. State.
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