Court Opinion

ID: 9808219
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-31 20:30:40.185606+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T12:10:07.922151
License: Public Domain

*749Avert, J.
dissenting: I feel constrained to express my dissent, though my brother Shepherd has relieved me, by a very clear and elaborate presentation of the law, and a full ■citation of authorities, of the trouble or necessity of extended discussion. I do not think that the legal proposition upon which the opinion of the Court is founded is supported by the previous adjudications of our own Court. I feel assured that the new principle, when adopted in practice, will prove •unjust and oppressive to ignorant and helpless people who are sometimes arraigned in the Courts upon false and .groundless charges; and its enforcement will vindicate the wisdom of the old rule, which did not relieve the State of the laboring oar from the arraignment of a prisoner till the final judgment was entered against him. The opinion is, I think, misleading in assuming that the power and duty of the Court to proceed to judgment after verdict upon several counts, one of which is good and the others defective, has been drawn in question. In such cases, a motion in arrest ■of judgment cannot be sustained. In this we can all heartily concur, because it does not appear upon the face of the record that the trial Judge has committed any error, and it does not imperil the rights or liberty of any one to assume that the conviction was upon the good count, and that the trial upon it, in the absence of any exception that opens ■the way for us to look behind the verdict, was fair and just. But I cannot concede, or, by silence, acquiesce in the ruling, that when a defendant poiuts out an error of the Judge, to which he excepted in apt time in the Court below, either in the refusal to admit competent testimony offered, or the .admission of incompetent testimony objected to bearing upon one or two good counts in the indictment upon which he is being tried, or in the misdirection of the jury as to such ■count, he is to be deprived of the right of a new trial, when it is admitted that the Judge made an erroneous ruling because the defendant did not go further, and while the *750Court and Solicitor remained passive, demand separate verdicts upon the different counts in the indictment. It seems to me that when we shift the burden of calling for distinct findings upon the Courts from the prosecuting officer to the prisoner, we have gone one step in the direction of wiping out tliefundamental principle, that every citizen ispre-sumed to be innocent until his guilt is proven and established by the verdict of a jury. Included in this rule, and distinctly legible between the lines, the Courts and legal profession have read and acted upon the principle, that when a defendant assigned in the way prescribed by law an error of the Court that might have lead to (not that it did cause) his conviction, he had a right to demand a new trial. It is hot denied that in the cause before us the jury might have discredited all testimony tending to show that the defendant uttered the oath, as charged in the first count of the indictment. If so, it would follow that she is to be pu nished, when the only credible testimony applied to the second count, and she must have been convicted on that, though she would not have been, if the Court had not misdirected the jury as to the law. The dirty aud disgusting details of this trial are naturally calculated to make us forget that, even in such cases, there may be a great principle involved that permeates the whole criminal practice and affects the security of even good citizens when called upon to answer false charges It will prove more than questionable progress if, under the specious plea of dispensing with technicalities and allowing no guilty man to use them as a shelter, we break down any of the barriers that have been thrown around the people, both innocent and guilty, and make it ■ possible, by the failure on the part of the accused, to make a purely technical request, in apt time, to cover up an admitted error of a Judge charged with the administration of the criminal law.
*751It seems to be conceded that the cause of State v. McCauless, 9 Ired., 375, is not in harmony with the principle announced in the opinion of the Court in this case, and it cannot be denied that the case of State v. Williams, 9 Ired., 150, is equally irreconcilable with the construction now given by the Court to the case of State v. Stroud, 95 N. C., 626. If my brother Shepheed is not justified in characterizing the authority relied upon as an inadvertent expression, it would follow that the Court intended in State v. Stroud to overrule, in a single sentence, two well considered opinions delivered for the Court by Chief Justice Ruffin, without dignifying them by the slightest notice. I am satisfied that such a conclusion would be unjust to this Court, and to the learned and careful Justice who spoke for them in State v. Stroud.
If Riereis any conflict in our authorities upon this subject, except that raised by a dictum, which seems to have been especially controverted by Justice Shepheed, the most satisfactory solution of the trouble will be reached by adhering to the merciful rule, and throwing the burden upon an able Judge and competent prosecuting officer of making clear the meaning of the jury by requiring findings upon the separate counts. This would be in accord with every principle of our system of administering the criminal law, which is founded upon the idea that every man is presumed to be innocent till he is shown to be guilty, and that the government takes the burden of establishing his guilt at every stage of the prosecution.
Per Curiam. Affirmed.