Opinion ID: 1331807
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 4

Heading: Testimony of Stephen Florence

Text: Mooney next argues that the court erred in permitting Stephen Florence, nephew of Elmo Florence, to testify to a jailhouse conversation with Elmo and to certain other statements made by Elmo. The first contention, that Stephen's testimony was excludable as the fruit of the poisonous tree of the allegedly illegal searches of Mooney's luggage, must fail in light of our holding that the searches were not illegal. Stephen testified to a transaction in which he went with Elmo to Elmo's store in Atlanta accompanied by a man Stephen identified as the defendant Mooney. Elmo sold to Mooney a snub nosed .38 calibre gun, and Mooney seemed nervous as he paid. Elmo described the gun as hot. After Mooney had left, Elmo explained to Stephen that the man bought the gun because he was under a lot of pressure about someone to whom he owned money and he needed to kill that person to avoid paying. Later, Stephen visited his uncle Elmo in jail where Elmo was charged with murder. They spoke by telephone as they were separated by a glass partition. Elmo gave him a message written down on a pad which read don't identify him. The written message is attacked as inadmissible, on the ground that it is inherently unreliable, was made after the conspiracy had ended, and that the conspiracy was never proved. A conspiracy or the concealment phase of it does not necessarily end just because one or more participants have been arrested and jailed. Dutton v. Evans, supra (statement made to a fellow prisoner held admissible). Under the rationale of division 3 hereof, this testimony did not violate Mooney's confrontation rights. The assertion that a conspiracy was never proved by admissible evidence and therefore no predicate existed for the admission of this evidence as a co-conspirator's declaration, is without merit. With respect to the reliability of Stephen's conjecture that Mooney was the man to whom the note had reference, we note that this conjecture was made with the jury out of the courtroom. All the jury heard was that Elmo presented the note saying don't identify him, and after talking about other stuff Stephen left. However, during questioning with the jury out, Stephen's answers were that his uncle had first asked if he had seen a lineup, then shown him the note, and that Stephen could not remember whether Elmo had mentioned Mooney by name, but he was certain that the man referred to was the man to whom Elmo had sold the gun  Mooney. The objections to this evidence were properly overruled.