Court Opinion

ID: 9694000
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-25 17:18:09.269264+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:19:54.224026
License: Public Domain

SIMPSON, Justice
(dissenting).
A majority of the Court has pronounced reversible error in the ruling of the trial court denying to defendant the right to introduce in evidence a part of a so-called document introduced in part by the State.
The State had introduced a paper purporting to be a transcription in writing of the confession made by defendant to witness Williams. At the end of this transcription there was an endorsement or certificate in the handwriting of the witness in these words: “This statement was made in the presence of Alvin Davis, Jr., and investigator John Williams, however, Tiner would not sign it.” The solicitor moved to withdraw the quoted endorsement. The trial court granted the motion, whereupon, after some inquiry to the witness, counsel for defendant asked that that part of the endorsement reading: “however, Tiner would not sign it”, be introduced along with the confession appearing on the same paper. The solicitor objected to the introduction of *271these words without the rest of the endorsement. The court sustained this objection, holding that all of the endorsement and not merely a part of it should be introduced.
It is the conclusion of the majority that it was error to allow the State to withdraw the quoted endorsement and, further, that it was error to require defendant to introduce the entire endorsement rather than merely the words: “however, Tiner would not sign it”. With this I cannot agree. In the first place, the endorsement was no part of the document proper, viz., the confession. It was an appendage, in the words of the witness, and following what purported to be a transcription of the incriminatory statement attributed to the defendant. Certainly, it was no part of the purported confession, and had it been allowed to remain in evidence it would have rendered the document or transcript inadmissable and subjected the cause to reversal for introducing hearsay or self-serving evidence. The solicitor, evidently realizing this, properly moved that the endorsement be deleted, and the trial court properly withdrew it. This being so, there was no right in defendant to introduce a part of the objectionable whole. There is no field of operation for the rule governing the right of one party to offer in evidence the whole of a document where the other party has introduced a part of it. Since the entire endorsement was improperly introduced in the first place and the objectionable part properly excluded on motion of the solicitor, it cannot be said that by removing the objectionable matter the State was in effect allowed to introduce only a part of the confession document and that in fairness defendant should have been allowed to introduce all or a part of the document which had not been introduced.
Nevertheless, the trial court offered to permit the defendant to introduce the entire endorsement, and this the defendant refused to do, insisting upon only a part of it. Had the trial court acceded to defendant’s request and deleted the first part of the memorandum of the witness, the remaining words would have been meaningless, not a complete sentence but a hanging clause.
In the second place, it is difficult to see how defendant could have been prejudiced in any event. Williams, himself, testified orally that defendant refused to sign the confession, and there is no evidence that he did not so refuse. The more important question for the jury, upon testimony of the witnesses pro and con, was whether or not defendant made the confession at all. To repeat, it was indisputably shown that he would not and did not sign the purported transcript made by Williams.
No possible error is shown to have occurred and I, therefore, respectfully dissent.
GOODWYN and MERRILL, JJ., concur in the foregoing.