People v. Valentín
People v. Valentín
Opinion of the Court
delivered tbe opinion of tbe court.
Tbe first ground alleged by tbe appellant for a reversal of tbe judgment convicting him of tbe crime of voluntary homicide is based on tbe contention that the court below erred in overruling his motion to quash filed on December 5, 1925.
The second assignment is that the lower court erred in allowing the district attorney to amend the indictment found by the grand jury.
That indictment charges that the accused committed assault and battery upon Venancio Gaya with a revolver, inflicting upon him various wounds from which he died some moments later, and the defendant having moved for a bill of particulars of those wounds and their nature, the district attorney gave a description of them as required.
The refusal of the court to grant a continuance at the instance of the accused is also assigned as error.
The motion for a continuance was based by the defendant on the fact that his attorney was a member of the House of Eepresentatives and had to attend its sessions, but that fact gives no right to a continuance, as has been held before. Claudio v. Ortiz, 29 P.R.R. 404.
Nor did the court below err in refusing to allow the warden of the jail to exhibit to the court the prison record of Pedro Quiñones Hernández for the purpose of impeaching his veracity as a witness because of his having been convicted formerly of a felony, for aside from the fact that the judgment rendered against him is better evidence than the summary of it that may appear in the said prison record, at any rate the ruling of the court resulted in no prejudice to the accused because the said sentence certified to by the clerk of the district court was by him introduced as evidence of that particular.
Finally it is assigned as error that the district attorney arrested a witness for the defense in the presence of the jury for supposed perjury, because such conduct created distrust in the minds of the jurors.
On this point the following is all that appears in the record: “The defense stated that after witness Jordán Morales had testified, and without the apparent commission of any crime, the district attorney, in the presence of the jury, ordered the arrest of the said Jordán Morales without announcing that he was going to impeach his testimony in any way.” The mere statement of the defense transcribed
The judgment appealed from must be affirmed.
Case-law data current through December 31, 2025. Source: CourtListener bulk data.