Court Opinion

ID: 9864444
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-09-25 13:08:28.617493+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T12:12:17.675584
License: Public Domain

Hart, J., (on rehearing). Counsel for the defendant ask for a rehearing, because they insist that the provisions of § 3140 of Crawford & Moses’ Digest were not complied with. The record shows that the defendant and three other persons were jointly indicted for the murder of Lou Stout, charged to have 'been committed while robbing a bank in Sulphur Springs, Benton County, Ark. The defendants elected to sever for trial. McDonald was tried first, then the defendant, Clark, and then Burchfield. The defendants did not elect the order in which they should be tried, and it is insisted that, under the statute, the defendant shoüld have ‘been tried last, because' his name appeared last in the indictment. This is not the effect of the statute as construed by this, court. The provisions of the statute have been held to be directory merely. Where defendants jointly indicted sever, they stand in court as they would had they been indicted separately. If one is not ready for trial, or is not tried when his case is reached, the next in order of succession stands for trial like all other cases upon the criminal docket of the court. Thus it will be seen that, when the defendants severed, the defendant Clark stood upon the docket as if he had been separately indicted, and his case might be tried when reached upon the call of the calendar like that*of any other defendant. He has no concern with what was done with the other defendants after they had severed. Sims v. State, 68 Ark. 188, and Burns v. State, 155 Ark. 1. It is next insisted that the defendant should have a rehearing because he was not served with a true copy of the indictment as required by § 3052 of Crawford & Moses’ Digest. ■ There is no merit whatever in this contention. The defendant was served with a copy of the indictment. His only contention in this respect is that the copy served upon hi(m did not contain the name of the foreman of the grand .jury and the date of the filing of the indictment. The object of the statute in question is to inform the defendant of the charge against him so that he may ibe enabled to prepare himself for trial. Johnson v. State, 43 Ark. 391. The copy of the indictment served upon the defendant contained Hhe names of ¡the witnesses against him, and informed him of the nature of the charge against him. It was complete in all respects except as to the date that it was filed in court, and the name of the foreman of the grand jury. These were immaterial matters, and we are of the opinion that the statute was substantially complied with. Moreover, this court has frequently held that the .statute might be waived. Johnson v. State, 43 Ark. 391, and Powell v. State, 74 Ark. 355. The defendant had already filed a motion to quash the indictment for certain specified reasons contained in his motion, and also a motion for a change of venue. Both of these motions had been overruled by the court. His action in this respect constituted a waiver of his privilege to have a copy of the indictment served upon him. 0 Counsel for the defendant, also, insisted that the court erred in giving instruction No. 15, which reads as follows: “If you find from the evidence beyond a reasonable doubt that Tyrus Clark, while in the alleged perpetration of robbing- the Bank of Sulphur Springs, wilfully fired a shot at Lou Stout, which resulted in his death, then the mere fact that he did not intend to take life in the alleged perpetration of robbery is no defense to the charge against him. ” We did not set out this instruction in our original opinion or make any separate discussion of it for the reason that we believed that it was contained in our discussion of the law. As we have already seen, the defendant was indicted under § 2342 of Crawford & Moses’ Digest, which provides that all murder committed in the perpetration of robbery, burglary, larceny, etc., shall be dee'med murder in the first degree. The intent of the Legislature was to say that where a party committed murder he should be guilty and punished for murder in first degree, if it was done in the perpetration of any of the crimes named in the statute. . . It may ibe true, as contended by counsel for the defendant, that a person could commit a homicide in the perpetration of a robbery and not be guilty of murder in the first degree, still the record before us does not show a state of facts that would authorize the court in charging on any other grade of homicide than murder in the first degree. There is no middle ground in the case. According to the evidence for the State, the defendant and three other persons went to the. Bank of Sulphur Springs for the purpose of robbing it. The defendant and one of these persons stayed in the automobile in which they went to the bank, for the purpose of watching and guarding while the other two went into the bank and robbed it. Ain officer of the bank was informed of the fact of the robbery and went to the door of his store for the purpose of stopping the robbery or capturing the robbers. As soon as he opened the front, door of his store, one of the persons in the car commenced shooting at him with a shotgun. The defendant is shown to have been the person who had the shotgun. The person in the car with the defendant also testified that the defendant shot .the deceased. The proof for the State also showed that Stout died as the result of the wound received from the first shot. If the testimony for the State was believed by the jury, the killing was committed in the perpetration of robbery, and by the express language of the statute which supplied the elements of wilfullness, deliberation, and premeditation, the killing was murder in the first degree. When, on the evidence, the,accused is clearly guilty of murder in the first degree, or not guilty, it is not only the right, but the duty, of the court to so instruct the jury. The fact that the defendant did not intend to take life in the perpetration of the robbery is.no defense under, the statute. The defendant himself admits that he went there to aid in the perpetration of the robbery, and the mere fact that he had no intention to commit murder while committing the robbery would afford him no defense under the statute. If such was the case, then the statute can serve no useful purpose. Such is the effect of our former decisions in the cases of Henry v. State, 151 Ark. 620, and Kelly v. State, ante p. 289. : In addition to the authorities cited in our former opinion, we call attention. to a case note in 21 A. L. R. 628. In the discussion of homicide by poison or in the perpetration of felony, the annotator there said: “The courts have frequently decided that where the only evidence of a homicide tends to show that it was committed by poison or in the perpetration of, or an attempt to perpetrate, one of the felonies enumerated in the statute defining murder in the first degree, no instruction on any grade of homicide less than murder in the first degree is necessary, and that one convicted of murder in the first degree on such evidence is not entitled to a new trial because of a failure to charge the law on a lower grade of homicide, or because of an instruction that no conviction of a lower degree can be had. ’ ’ We have examined cases from the various States cited in the note- and find that they support the text. Under the evidence there was no middle ground or room for compromise in the present cáse. Under the evidence for ther-State the defendant was guilty of the statutory crime of murder in the first degree, committed in the perpetration of robbery. The jury was properly directed to find that -defendant was guilty of murder in the first degree,’ or not guilty. A further examination of the record -convinces us that there was no prejudicial error in the trial of the defendant, and his motion for a rehearing must be denied.