Court Opinion

ID: 9562218
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-21 18:23:48.722556+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T09:17:15.132648
License: Public Domain

Leggs, Justice
(dissenting).
In Coleman & Lipscomb v. Frasier, 4 Rich. 146, 38 S. C. 146, 53 Am. Dec. 727, evidence of Meigs’ declaration was, as Justice Moss points out, admitted on two grounds, to wit: (1) that the declaration was against the penal interest of the declarant, who at the time of the trial was dead; and (2) that it had been made in the defendant’s presence. But, the court having based its decision on both grounds, we cannot evade the consequences of the ruling on the first by saying that the decision might have been rested on the second alone. Where a decision is based on two or more grounds, the ruling upon each is the judgment of the court; neither ruling is obiter; nor is the ruling on one ground less authoritative than that on another. 14 Am. Jur., Courts, Section 83, at p. 298; 21 C. J. S., Courts § 190 b, at pages 315, 316; United States v. Title Insurance & Trust Co., 265 U. S. 472, 44 S. Ct. 621, 68 L. Ed. 1110; Broderick v. City of New York, 295 N. Y. 363, 67 N. E. (2d) 737; Dooly v. Gates, 194 Ga. 787, 22 S. E. (2d) 730; Hayes v. City of Wilmington, 243 N. C. 525, 91 S. E. (2d) 673; Woodard v. Pacific Fruit & Produce Co., 165 Or. 250, 106 P. (2d) 1043, 131 A. L. R. 832; In re Finch’s Estate, 239 Iowa 1069, 32 N. W. (2d) 819, 3 A. L. R. (2d) 1403; Gaskill v. Richmaid Ice Cream Co., Ill Cal. App. (2d) 745, 245 P. (2d) 53. We should either follow or overrule Coleman & Lipscomb v. Frasier on the question of admissibility of a declaration against penal interest.
Although the decisions in a majority of the states limit the admission of declarations by persons since deceased to such as are against the declarant’s pecuniary or proprietary interest, I am persuaded that the ruling in Cóleman & Lipscomb v. Frasier, supra, is sound and should be adhered to. It is difficult to perceive sound reason for excluding a declaration against penal interest while admitting one *470against pecuniary interest. The exclusionary rule has been thoroughly criticized by Professor Wigmore (Evidence, Third Ed., Vol. V, Sections 1476 et seq.) and Professor McCormick (Handbook of the Law of Evidence, 1954, Sections 255 et seq.). See also the dissenting opinion of Mr. Justice Holmes in Donnelly v. United States, 228 U. S. 243, 33 S. Ct. 449, 57 L. Ed. 820. As was said in Sutter v. Easterly, 354 Mo. 282, 189 S. W. (2d) 284, 289, 162 A. L. R. 437, concerning a declaration by one confessing to perjury in the procurement of a judgment for another: “This statement subjected him not only to the possibility of indictment and imprisonment, but to the prospect of being held up to public shame in his community. It is completely unrealistic to say that a statement of such character is not ‘against one’s interest’ and ‘unlikely to be either deliberately false or heedlessly incorrect’ ”.
In his Handbook on South Carolina Evidence (S. C. Law Quarterly, Vol. 9, No. 4A, pp. 130-133), Judge Whaley enumerates the essentials, under our decisions, to admissibility of a declaration against interest. They are, in brief:
1. That the declarant is dead. Judge Whaley calls attention to the concurring opinion of Mr. Justice Woods in Fonville v. Atlanta & C. A. L. R. Co., 93 S. C. 287, 75 S. E. 172, as tending to liberalize this requirement by holding the declaration admissible though the declarant is living, if he is in fact unavailable as a witness.
2. That the declarant would have been competent as a witness.
3. That the declaration is against the interest, either pecuniary or incriminatory, of the declarant.
4. That it was made before the controversy arose.
5. That it was made without any interest on the part of the declarant to falsify the fact.
6. That the fact declared was within the knowledge of the declarant.
*471All of the foregoing elements are present here. That the declaration of Frank Martin tended to inculpate respondent as well as himself does not render it incompetent. The test of its competency is whether or not the declarant, if living, would have been competent to testify to the fact stated in the declaration. That Frank Martin would have been competent to so testify seems obvious. The instant case is not within the principle that forbids the use of a confession by one of two co-defendants or co-conspirators as evidence against the other. The situation is rather like that in Coleman & Lipscomb v. Frasier, supra. There the self-incriminatory declaration of Meigs was admitted against the defendant Frazier, the postmaster, in proof of the latter’s negligence in office. Here the declaration of Frank Martin was competent and relevant on the issues raised by the pleas of qualified privilege and justification. It seems to me, too, that Frank Martin’s declaration was made to relatives and friends is a matter that goes to the credibility or the weight of the evidence, and not to its admissibility.
As to the second ground upon which the learned trial judge granted respondent’s motion for a new trial, he said:
“Pursuant to defendant’s request, I charged the jury: ‘a publication made in good faith concerning activities of public officials is privileged and further, there is a presumption that such publications are made in good faith because such a publication concerning public officials is required by the public good if the charges made in such statements are true’. And further, that ‘there is a presumption that such charges were made in good faith, pursuant to the newspaper’s duty to the public’. The plaintiff made timely objection to this charge.
“Upon mature consideration, I am of the opinion that the charge went too far. The publications complained of were, if untrue, libelous per se, and publication of an article libelous per se carries with it malice. Bell v. Bank of Abbeville, 208 S. C. 490, 38 S. E. (2d) 641.”
*472When considered in connection with the rest of the charge on qualified privilege, the two sentences quoted above do not appear erroneous or misleading. They merely rephrased part of the well-settled rule that had been previously charged, to-wit: that where the defendant has established by the preponderance of the evidence that the occasion was privileged and that the privilege was not abused, the presumption of malice arising from the publication of a statement libelous per se is thereby rebutted.
I would reverse the judgment of the trial court.