Court Opinion

ID: 9824643
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-09-01 11:03:50.343946+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:39:56.219455
License: Public Domain

On Rehearing.
On the 12th day of July, 1915 (Local Acts 1915, pp. 231, 235, § 11),-the Legislature passed an act repealing the act of April 20, 1911 (Loc. Acts 1911, p. 371), and giving authority to the judge of an inferior court to make returnable to another court a cause of which he has final jurisdiction or concurrent jurisdiction, and therefore the demurrer interposed by the defendant was properly overruled.
[18,19] What has been said in the main opinion in this case with reference to the associates of defendant will apply to the testimony of witnesses to the effect that the Burton Hotel was a gambling house. The defendant being tried for vagrancy, the question of whether or not the Burton Hotel was a gambling house was evidentiary and pertinent to the issue. Testimony of facts known to a witness cannot be said to be conclusions. It is not the reputation of the house which is being testified to by the witness, but the fact that it is a house in which gambling is carried on.
[20] The court asked the witness Christian this question: “Was .this room furnished as an ordinary gambling room?” to which question the witness answered “Yes.” Objection and exception were taken both to question and answer. This was not a conclusion, but was a collective statement of fact.
[21] After the witness Christian had testified that after the going into effect of the new prohibition laws he was present at the time in the Forrest Club, of which the defendant was secretary; that the club was raided and a lot of whisky was taken out, and after it had been shown that quite a lot of whisky and beer had been taken out of the Forrest Club, he was then asked if this was after the license had been revoked by the commissioners. This question was evidently for the purpose of fixing the time of the raid, and therefore was not objectionable.
[22, 23] The defendant, in brief, insists that the court committed error in permitting the solicitor to ask a state’s witness the following question: “Was Oscar Freeman convicted of operating a gambling table there?” (referring to the Forrest Club, which place it had been shown was frequented by the defendant) because it called for evidence that was immaterial, irrelevant, and, incompetent. The rule is that where a general objection of this kind is interposed, it may be overruled, unless the evidence is manifestly illegal and irrelevant, and apparently incapable of being rendered admissible, in connection with other evidence. Sanders v. Knox et al., 57 Ala. 80. That Oscar Freeman, who was shown to have been an associate of the defendant, had been convicted of operating a gambling table in the Forrest Club, a place which the defendant frequented, was certainly not immaterial, nor was it irrelevant, and the answer, if true, would be -competent, as tending to establish a material issue in the pending cause. As' was said by Collier, C. J., in Wallis v. Rhea and Ross, 10 Ala. 453, and reaffirmed in Sanders v. Knox, supra:
“Undefined objections should never be made to the admission of evidence, and it may be laid down generally, that if the party making them will not particularize, the court is not bound to cast about for the grounds upon which, in the mind of counsel, they are rested, but may properly disregard them.”
We may add, in this, connection, that there are quite a number of questions appearing in this record to which similar general objections have been made and overruled, whereas if the specific objections had been made to the particular question, calling the attention of the court to what was in the mind of counsel, the objection would doubtless have been sustained.
[24] The other questions raised by the record have been examined by this court, and, after an examination of the entire cause, it does not appear that any of the errors complained of, if errors at all, have probably injuriously affected the substantial rights of the defendant, and therefore would not constitute reversible error. Supreme Court rule 45 (175 Ala. xxi, 61 South, ix).
The application for rehearing is overruled.
Application overruled.