Landrum v. State
Landrum v. State
Opinion of the Court
delivered the opinion of the court.
The seventh instruction for the State should not have been given. It was inapplicable, because the witnesses contradicted each other under such circumstances as to compel the rejection of the testimony of some of them as untrue. One witness testified that the defendant had an open knife in the hand witli which he struck at Tucker, and several witnesses testified that he did not have a knife in his hand, and that they saw him under circumstances as favorable to observation by them as by the witness who testified to the knife in the defendant’s hands. ' In this state of case the jury should not have been told that the law required the belief of one witness or class of witnesses rather than another, but it should have been left free to decide between the contradictory testimony, without having thrown into the scale on- one side a maxim of uncertain meaning and questionable value except in the particular state of case to which it is strictly applicable.
This instruction must have been potent in resolving the case
Reversed and remanded.
Reference
- Full Case Name
- Isaac Landrum v. State
- Cited By
- 1 case
- Status
- Published
- Syllabus
- Evidehce. Whether negative. Instruction. Criminal practice. Upon tbe trial of an indictment charging L. with haying assaulted T. with the intent to kill and murder him with a knife, one witness for the State testified that he saw L. strike T. with an open knife in his hand, and several witnesses for the defendant testified that L. had no knife in his hand, and that they had as good opportunities for observation as the State’s witness had. The court instructed the jury that, “Testimony as to what a man saw or heard is positive testimony, and testimony as to what he did not see or hear is negative testimony, and, as a rule of law, the positive testimony of a single witness is of more worth than the negative testimony of a number, the witnesses being equal in other respects.” Held, that the instruction was inapplicable and improper in this case, and the jury should have been left free to decide between the contradictory testimony.