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107 Ala. 74

Moseley v. State

Supreme Court of Alabama

Decided November 15, 1894

Supreme Court of Alabama · decided 1894-11-15

Tried before the Hon. Thomas M. Aurcnuton. Appellant was indicted and tried for the murder of one Jerry Stewart, and was convicted of murder in the second degree. The rulings of the lower court, reviewed on this appeal, are sufficiently stated in the opinion. The evidence for the State tended to show that the defendant was guilty as charged.

Relies on Maxwell v. State · Fariss v. State

Good law ✅— No negative treatment on recordhow we know

Decided 1894-11-15

How this case has been cited

Cited by 4 later decisions — most recently May 1931

4 state decisions

2018941900191019201930decided

Later decisions citing this case, by decade. The current decade is in progress, and our corpus holds fewer opinions from the most recent years, so the latest bars are undercounted — not a real decline.

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COLEMAN, J.

¶1The defendant was convicted of murder in the second degree. There are but two exceptions in the record to the ruling of the trial court.

¶2The defendant moved the court to quash the venire, upon the ground, that the court of its own motion had excused from attendance without his knowledge or consent and in his absence, certain jurors summoned on the regular panel, whose names were on the special venire served on him, from which the jury, for his trial, was to be empanelled. The order of the court was, that said j urors be excused from further attendance for reasons deemed sufficient by the court.” The authority of the court to excuse a juror by asimilar order, arose in the case of Farris v. The State, 85 Ala. 1, and it was said, “It must be presumed that judges, in excusing jurors, act on correct principles, and disclrarge them only for good and sufficient reasons,” and it was decided, that the court committed no reversible error, in excusing the jurors. The rule settled by the decision in the Farris Case, was recognized as the law, in the subsequent case of Maxwell v. The State, 89 Ala. 150. The facts of the case of Sullivan v. The State, 302 Ala. 135, are not stated. When the principles declared are referred to the facts as they appear in the record, there is no conflict in the case with our conclusion.

¶3The second exception relates to the refusal of the court to charge the jury as requested by the defendant. The charge requested, when referred to the evidence, was calculated to mislead the jury. Some of the facts predicated in the charge were controverted, and the inference, *76which the j ury by the charge were authorized to infer from them, is stated, in a manner calculated, to influence the jury to draw the inference stated, in the case at bar. In this respect it is a charge on the weight of the evidence, and an invasion of the province of the jury.

¶4Affirmed.

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