Public-domain · open source
OpenJurist

118 Tenn. 375

Walker v. State

Tennessee Supreme Court

Decided December 15, 1906

Tennessee Supreme Court · decided 1906-12-15

<p>JUROR. Objection to, for disqualification propter defectum, too late after verdict.</p> <p>An objection that a juror, though, a resident of the county and otherwise qualified, lived outside the territorial jurisdiction of the court and within that of a special court created for a limited portion of the same county, is propter defectum, and must be made in limine, and comes too late after verdict.</p>

Good law ✅— No negative treatment on recordhow we know

Decided 1906-12-15

How this case has been cited

Cited by 7 later decisions — most recently February 2014

7 state decisions

30190619101920193019401950196019701980199020002010decided

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.

View the full empirical analysis of this case →

Mr. Chief Justice Beard

¶1delivered tbe opinion of tbe Court.

¶2Plaintiff in error was indicted for tbe murder of one Collier, and on a trial in tbe circuit court of Dickson county was found guilty of voluntary manslaughter, and bis punishment fixed at five years’ confinement in tbe. penitentiary. On this appeal from tbe judgment pro-*376nonneed on this verdict, we deem it unnecessary to state the evidence on which the conviction rests, or to notice it, further than to say we are satisfied, after a careful examination of the record, that the finding of the jury is sustained by the weight of the testimony submitted to them.

¶3It was urged in the court below on the motion for a new trial, and the insistence is renewed here, that the verdict was vitiated by reason of the fact that one of the jurors, while a citizen of Dickson county and otherwise qualified, lived outside of the territorial jurisdiction of the trial court and within that of a special court created by chapter 287, p. 533, of the Session Acts of 1899, for a limited portion of that county.

¶4This objection was one propter defectum, and came too late. Such an objection must be made in limine, It is immaterial that the particular disqualification is unknown to the party complaining and his counsel when the juror is accepted. The acceptance, when once made, is conclusive. This is an ancient rule of the common law, adopted by this court at an early day, and uniformly applied. Among the cases recognizing it are McClure v. State, 1 Yerg., 206; Gillespie v. State, 8 Yerg., 507, 29 Am. Dec., 137; Ward v. State, 1 Humph., 255; Hamilton v. State, 101 Tenn., 417, 47 S. W., 695; Goad v. State, 106 Tenn., 175, 61 S. W., 79.

¶5The judgment of the circuit court is therefore affirmed.

/118/tenn/375 · .json · Public domain