Court Opinion

ID: 9811206
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-31 22:12:56.660086+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T15:07:40.725091
License: Public Domain

"WalKee, J.,
concurring: I agree with the opinion and conclusion of the Court in this case, for the same reason and partly upon the same ground that I refused my assent to the opinion in the case of In re Peterson, 136 N. C., 13, at page 28, though for reasons there stated I concurred in the result, a new trial having been awarded.
It is not competent for a witness, especially a nonexpert, to give bis opinion, for instance, as to whether a testator or a grantor in a deed bad or bad not sufficient mental capacity to execute the particular instrument in question, and much less is it competent for him to state whether a defendant bad sufficient mental capacity to run, or operate, a whiskey or brandy still. I stated fully the reason for the opinion I then held, when the Peterson case was decided (1904), and have entertained ever since (being more convinced, after greater consideration of it since that time, that it is clearly right). I appeal to the highest authority, one of the greatest, if not the greatest, judge who ever sat upon this bench, and I disparage none in so saying. the very question was raised in Crowell v. Kirk, 14 N. C., 356. At that time this bench was composed of Leonard Henderson, Thomas Ruffin, and Joseph J. Daniel. Judge Ruffin, in bis opinion, said: “As far as we perceive any meaning, we suppose the attempt was to get the opinion of the witness, whether the supposed testator bad capacity to malee a will. It could not be, whether be thought him in possession of ordinary faculties, when be executed the instrument; because the witness did not profess-to have been present; and because be bad just said that when sober be bad bis proper mind and senses. If this was the purpose of the inquiry, it was properly refused; for the witness is not to decide what constitutes mental capacity, or a disposing mind and memory; that being a matter of legal definition. He might state the degree of intelligence or imbecility in the best way be could, so as to impart to the court and jury the knowledge of bis meaning, that they might ascertain what was the state of the testator’s mind and memory; but whether that was adequate to the disposition of bis property by will did not rest in the opinion of the witness.” That is the question we have here, although the latter is far less competent than was the question in the Crowell case, supra. In Lawson on Expert and Op. Evidence (2 ed.), 155, it is said: “Capacity to make a. will is not a simple question of fact. It is a conclusion which the law draws from certain facts as premises. Hence, it is improper to ask and obtain the opinion of even a physician as to the capacity of any one to make a *706will. Under our system that question was addressed to the jury. All evidence wbicb tended to shed light on his mental status, the clearness and soundness of his intellectual powers, should have gone before them. This being done, however, the witness -should not have been made to invade the province of the jury.” And the same was also stated in the following authorities: Walker v. Walker, 34 Ala., 470; In re Arnold, 14 Hun., 525; Reg. v. Richards, Fos. & Fin., 87, and Fairchild v. Bascom, 35 Vt., 416, citing Crowell v. Kirk, 14 N. C., 356. But the opinion of the Court, as delivered by Judge Daniel, in Crowell v. Kirk, supra, is conclusive upon the incompetency of such a question. He said: “The defendant’s counsel asked his own witness, Harris, if in his opinion the testator was capable of making a will; an objection being made, the witness was not permitted to answer the question. I do not think that the judge erred in this. The opinions of witnesses in England are confined to persons of science, art, or skill in some particular branch of business, and they have, to give the reasons upon which their opinions are founded. All other witnesses are to state the facts, and the jury make up their opinions on the facts thus deposed to. In this country the courts have said that the law placed the subscribing witness about the testator to ascertain and judge of his capacity. But no case has gone the length of permitting the evidence of opinion offered in this case to go to the jury.” The case last cited, it seems, is directly in point and explains what is said in Clary v. Clary, 24 N. C., 78, so as to reconcile that case with the authorities. What was stated by Judge Gaston in Clary v. Clary, supra, is fully explained by Judge Daniel (for the entire Court) in the Crowell case, supra, where it is said, at least substantially, that Judge Gaston’s language must be considered in relation to the particular-question asked the witness in that ease, and had reference to mental condition or soundness, and not to mental capacity, which is quite a different thing.
The error in Whitaker v. Hamilton, 126 N. C., 465, and which has crept into some other expressions in our decisions, rests entirely upon what was supposed to have been said in Clary v. Clary, supra, and one or two cases in which the Court seems to have clearly misunderstood the scope of that decision, as fixed by Judge Ruffin, the elder, Judge Daniel, and Judge Gaston, and by other judges who have followed them. Smith v. Smith, 117 N. C., 326; McDougald v. McLean, 60 N. C., 120. And in Rogers on Expert Testimony (2 ed.), p. 164, sec. 69, it is said that the “weight of authority is opposed to allowing the witness to express an opinion as to whether an individual had the mental capacity to dispose of his property by will or deed.”
There is a wide difference between mental condition or soundness and mental capacity, and if this difference is carefully regarded, most of the *707eases in our Reports can easily be harmonized. Crowell v. Kirk, 14 N. C., 356; Clary v. Clary, supra,; Smith v. Smith, 117 N. C., 326; Lawson on Exp. and Op. Ev. (2 ed.), p. 155; Fairchild v. Bascom, 35 Vt., 416; Reg. Richards, Fos. and Fin., 87; Walker v. Walker, 34 Ala., 470; In re Arnold, 14 Hun., 525. The case of Whitaker v. Hamilton, 126 N. C., 465, was, in my opinion, erroneously decided, and should be overruled. A witness is no more competent to express an opinion as to the mental capacity of a testator to make his will than he would be to state that an act was negligently done, both involving questions of law. The latter kind of testimony this Court has steadily and consistently held to be incompetent. Tillett v. R. R., 118 N. C., 1031. Nor can he state that another has acted bona fide, or without fraud. Wolf v. Arthur, 112 N. C., 691. In Tillett v. R. R., supra, at p. 1042, Justice Avery said: “When, therefore, the witness was asked to state whether a ear was coupled in a negligent manner, the question was calculated to elicit an opinion upon one of the questions which the jury were impaneled to decide, and the objection to its competency, being made in apt time, was properly sustained.” Smith v. Smith, supra. Mental state may be proved by a witness’s opinion, as in McRae v. Malloy, 93 N. C., 154, cited in the opinion of the Court. See, also, Sherrill v. Tel. Co., 117 N. C., 353. It is also competent for a witness to give his opinion as to whether a person is a negro or not (Hopkins v. Bowers, 111 N. C., 175), or that his appearance indicates the presence of negro blood in his veins, as in Gilliland v. Board of Education, 141 N. C., 482. But in all the cases just noted, and in those cited in the opinion of the Court, as well as in the principal case, the inquiry referred to a state or condition not complicated with a question of law. A witness cannot give his opinion as to what the law is, either directly or indirectly, unless that is the very issue involved or the subject of inquiry, as when it relates to the law of some other jurisdiction, and he is called as a professional expert to prove it. That a nonexpert should not be asked a question requiring him to express his opinion upon a question of law would seem to be a proposition so plain as not to require any argument to demonstrate its correctness. He could just as well be asked if a will or deed had been properly executed. It is not the nature of the particular question of law involved, but the fact that it involves a question of law, which renders the witness incompetent to answer such a question.
This question is considered by me as very important to mark and preserve the true and proper distinction'which separates competent from incompetent evidence; otherwise 'great injustice may be done in the trial of causes.
It would seem that the question asked in this case, as to the sufficiency of defendant’s mental capacity to run a still, is so wide of the mark *708wbeix brought to the test of well settled rules of evidence as to be plainly incompetent. As a general rule, questions relating to character or to mental characteristics should be more general in form.' If it was intended to show that defendant was weak-minded with a view of arguing upon that and other evidence or circumstances that he was an imbecile, or not endowed with sufficient sense or perception to distinguish between right and wrong, and therefore that he was incapable of committing a crime, the evidence would, perhaps, have been competent and admissible, but to ask a witness if the defendant had mental capacity sufficient to run or operate a whiskey still would depend more upon his actual knowledge of such matters, acquired by his experience, than upon his mental ability or his natural skill. It does not, we imagine, require any high order of intellect, and certainly not of morals, to run or operate so simple a contrivance as a still, as very slight practice and experience would suffice in an ordinary case, as this was. The question was not as to his mental capacity to run a blockade still, but as to his capacity to distinguish between right and wrong, or the capax doli. As we say, and as the Assistant Attorney-General substantially puts it in his brief: "Whether or not, then, Journegan had sense enough to operate a blockade still was not the question. The fact was, he was operating the still, and with apparent vigor and success, and the inquiry should be confined to the question whether he was criminally liable for his act: If he was too insane to know the quality of his act, that is, to know that it was wrong and forbidden by law (toalum in se or malum, prohibitum), and the witness had had opportunity for observing him sufficiently to enable him to answer the question intelligently, he could give an opinion upon his sanity, or insanity, at the time the crime was alleged to «have been committed. S. v. Ketchey, 70 N. C., 621; McLeary v. Norment, 84 N. C., 235; Whitaker v. Hamilton, 126 N. C., 465; S. v. Terry, 173 N. C., 761; S. v. Coley, 114 N. C., 879. Exceptions 5 and 6 were to the court’s overruling objections to the following questions: “Is Journegan sufficiently capable to buy a stilling outfit?” (He had already bought it, and with seeming good judgment, and was actually using it.) “Have you any idea what his income is from his estate ?” The answers to these questions, in view of conceded facts, would have been plainly irrelevant as throwing no light upon the issue under investigation. Exception 7. Again, W. W. Green, a witness for the defendant, was testifying when he was asked this question, “Do you think he has sufficient mental capacity to operate an illicit distillery, and to know that it was wrong?” The same observation may be made upon this exception as was made upon exceptions 3 and 4. The opinion the witness was permitted to express was whether or not the defendant was insane, or of unsound mind, at the time. It was a matter for the jury, and not for the witness, *709to determine whether or not he had sufficient mental capacity to operate a distillery and to know that it was wrong. The defendant himself, however, went upon the stand and testified in the presence of the jury, and there is not the slightest indication, in his own testimony, of any diseased state of mind which would prevent his knowing the illegal quality of the act he was engaged in; on the contrary, it shows distinctly that he knew that making whiskey was both illegal and morally wrong. •There is no attempt in any of the evidence of the defendant to show that he had intervals of insanity and intervals of sanity. On the contrary, that evidence, if true, and taken in any aspect of it, would only show that he was not a man of normal strength of mind on account of his having had a sunstroke about 25 years ago. In any view of the case, it seems that the defendant was properly convicted and properly sentenced.
The fact that Journegan was present when the officers went to the place where the liquor was being manufactured, and the further fact that Journegan was in charge of the still, and was the leader of the “gang,” so to speak, directing what was being done illegally at the place, would seem to rebut the idea that he did not know what he was about, or did not fully comprehend that he was committing an unlawful act.
If the evidence were admissible, its exclusion should be assigned to the class of harmless errors, and surely is not such a one as calls for a reversal of the judgment. Nothing of any importance would be accomplished by such a course. If a witness had testified that Journegan did not have sufficient mental capacity to know that what he was doing was illegal, the jury would not have believed him, and should not have done so, for the contrary was so palpably the truth, if we judge the defendant by his own conduct when he was caught at the still — flagrcmto delicto. Besides, his own and real defense was that he did not run the still — not that he did not know how to run it. He knew intuitively that it was wrong to make “blockade liquor,” because when the officers appeared he took to his heels. Thus conscience does make cowards of us all, as Hamlet soliloquized, and there is nothing that has been more truthfully said and established in all the centuries. If this man did not know it was wrong to make blockade liquor, or any kind of liquor in these times, if he was so benighted as that, there was nothing to run from. He would have stood his ground in his ignorance and imbecility. ■ He exercised his mental faculties, felt consciously guilty, and fled instinctively before the pursuit of an offending law, represented in the person of its approaching officers.
The case is such a plain one, and defendant’s guilt is so conclusively established, that there is, at least, no substantial error, as the basis of a new trial, which is granted only when there is prejudicial and not merely *710theoretical error. Verdicts and judgments should not be lightly set aside upon grounds which show that alleged error to be harmless, or where the appellant could have sustained no injury from it. There should be at least something like a practical treatment of the motion to reverse, and it should not be granted except to subserve the real ends of substantial justice. Hilliard on New Trials (2 ed.), secs. 1 to 7. The motion should be meritorious and not frivolous. Graham and Waterman on New Trials, vol. 3, p. 1235. Courts are instituted to enforce right, and restrain and punish wrong. Their time is too valuable for them to interpose their remedial power idly, and to no purpose. They will only interfere, therefore, where there is not only error, but a prospect of ultimate benefit. S. v. Smith, 164 N. C., 475-480.
My conclusion is that there is nothing in this record to justify a reversal or any interference with the due course of justice.