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149 Ala. 28

Wright v. State

Supreme Court of Alabama

Decided April 11, 1907

Supreme Court of Alabama · decided 1907-04-11

Heard before Hon. John T. Lackland. Sam Wright was convicted of murder in the second degree and appeals. - The errors complained of sufficiently appear in the opinion of the court. No brief came to the reporter.

Good law ✅— No negative treatment on recordhow we know

Decided 1907-04-11

How this case has been cited

Cited by 5 later decisions — most recently March 1976

5 state decisions

2019071910192019301940195019601970decided

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, J. —

¶1The appellant, after severance, was convicted of murder in the second degree. The testimony on the part of the state tended to show that appellant, with others, among them one Bob Brown, attacked and beat to prostration one Linehan with sticks or pieces of rails, and one of them, Foster, then shot him to death. A witness for the state, having testified that Brown struck deceased a felling blow with a piece of fence rail, and contradicted herself (the bill states) in reference to the place from which Brown got the rail, was on the cross asked: “When you stated that Bob Brown stepped outside of the road as he came along behind you, you did not tell the truth?” A second question, in substance the same as that' quoted, was propounded, and both were disallowed on the state’s ob*29jection. These are the only exceptions appearing in the bill.

¶2Whatever may be the justifiable latitude allowed the cross-examination, or the discretion reposed in the trial court on the cross-examination of witnesses, the above question is intolerable. Whether what a witness has stated is the truth or not, as that verity appears or bears upon the issue submitted, is matter for the jury’s decision, and not that of the witness; and in determining which of two statements is the truth, other circumstances and facts were present in the case to which the jury might refer in deciding the truth vel non of the one or the other statement. Besides, if this query were allowable, a conclusion of the witness would be invited.

¶3We discover no error in the record, and the judgment of conviction is affirmed.

Tyson, C. J., and Dowdell and Anderson, JJ., concur.
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