Court Opinion

ID: 9590034
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-21 23:51:03.411611+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T09:05:00.728729
License: Public Domain

On Petitions for Rehearing
LUSK, J.
The defendant has filed two petitions for rehearing. In one the court is charged with committing 21 errors in its opinion, the first of which is as follows:
“That the Court erred in stating that the third assignment of error was abandoned. The electronic record will show that counsel stated he did not intend to use any of his time for oral argument with respect to this assignment.”
The third assignment of error reads:
“The court erred in refusing to authorize the use of county funds to pay for defendant’s Trans-script herein.”
The transcript referred to is the transcript of testimony. As the defendant secured such a transcript and made it a part of the bill of exceptions in this case, it is manifest that there could have been no merit in the assignment of error. Counsel for defendant recognized this on the oral argument, but apparently his memory of all that he said upon the subject is faulty. During the course of his rebuttal argument, as a transcription thereof shows, he was asked from the bench whether he was standing upon the third assignment of error. He stated that “The transcript is here” and that “the defendant is not prejudiced here.” He was *74finally asked: “In other words, yon don’t expect us to reverse the case on that ground, do you?” and he answered: “No, Your Honor, I don’t.” We think that this answer constitutes an effectual abandonment of the assignment of error.
The other alleged errors set forth in the petition all call for a reconsideration of questions which were deliberately decided after mature consideration. Some of these relate to our interpretation of the Uniform Act to Secure the Attendance of Witnesses from Without a State in Criminal Proceedings. Upon this question three of the justices were and still are of a different view from that taken by the majority. But we are all agreed that neither upon that question nor any of the others raised in the petition will any good purpose be served by a rehearing.
In the other petition (which is over the name of counsel who has come into the case since our decision was rendered), it is asserted “That the court erred in failing to note palpable error appearing in the record.” The alleged error relates to testimony given by a police officer respecting statements made to him by the defendant after his arrest. It is claimed that the officer, testifying to what in effect was a confession, stated not what the defendant said, but what he thought. The fact is, as the record shows, that the officer testified that while he and the defendant were talking about the crime with which the latter was charged the defendant said: “I done it.” The officer’s testimony may have been weakened on cross-examination, but there is nothing in the record to justify the claim that he admitted that he had related what the defendant thought except as those thoughts were communicated to the witness by words. No motion to strike the testimony was made, and no exception was taken to an instruction which *75treated the defendant’s statement “I done it”, if made voluntarily, as a confession, and no question was raised about it by counsel for appellant in his brief or on the oral argument in this court. Had the defendant at the trial moved to strike the testimony it would have been error to allow the motion.
It should be added that there is no provision in our rules authorizing the filing of two petitions for rehearing. We think that one is enough. Frequently it is too many.
The petitions are denied.