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123 Ala. 39

Williams v. State

Supreme Court of Alabama

Decided November 15, 1898

Supreme Court of Alabama · decided 1898-11-15

John Moore, Tbe appellants, Tom Williams and Bobert Perry, were indicted, tried and convicted for robbery of one Walter C. Munden, and were sentenced to tbe penitentiary for twelve years.

Relies on Campbell v. State · Johnson v. State · Linnehan v. State

Good law ✅— No negative treatment on recordhow we know

Decided 1898-11-15

How this case has been cited

Cited by 17 later decisions — most recently December 1976

17 state decisions

40189819001910192019301940195019601970decided

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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McCLELLAN, C. J.

¶1The general rule is well established in this State that a witness cannot testify to his uncommunicated motives or intentions. There is an exception to the rule to the effect that where a witness is sought to be impeached by showing by him on cross-examination that he has made contradictory statements, lu; may be asked in rebuttal why he made the statements in question.Johnson v. State, 102 Ala. 1; Campbell v. State, 23 Ala. 44, 76. And where the accused testifies in his own behalf to a particular act of his relevant to the issues, he may on cross-examination be asked what motive prompted him to the act or what intention actuated him — why he did it.Linnehan v. State, 120 Ala. 293. The question asked on cross-examination of the witness Johnson: “Why did you offer to carry him to your girl’s house after he had paid you to carry him to Patsy’s house?” is within the general rule and not within *42cither of the exceptions. Johnson was not one of the defendants on trial, nor did this inquiry have' relation to any contradictory statements made by Mm: he in fact had not testified at all about offering “to carry him ■[Munden] to” his girl’s house. The court properly sustained the solicitor’s objection to the question.

¶2• We are unable to say that the statement in the letter written by the defendant Williams a few days after the robbery, in which, money and property to about the amount of $15, nearly all which was money, had been taken, from a place to which he and his co-defendant had fled from the scene of the robbery and where they were under assumed names, that “We have got hold of about $15” was either irrelevant, incompetent or impertinent to the issues- in the case against said Williams, and wé do not think the court erred in allowing the •statement to go to the jury as evidence against that defendant.

¶3Affirmed.

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