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188 Ark. 1081

70 S.W.2d 39

Guthrie v. State

Supreme Court of Arkansas

Decided March 12, 1934

Supreme Court of Arkansas · decided 1934-03-12

Relies on Payne v. State · Sanders v. State · Durham v. State

Good law ✅— No negative treatment on recordhow we know

Decided 1934-03-12

How this case has been cited

Cited by 8 later decisions — most recently October 1982

8 state decisions

30193419401950196019701980decided

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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McHaney, J.

¶1 Appellant was convicted of murder in the second degree, and sentenced to twelve years in the penitentiary for the killing of Bryant Graves on October 1, 1933.

¶2 The only assignment of error relied upon for a reversal of the judgment is that a material witness for the State, "Willie Heriod, a negro boy 15 years of age, was disqualified by reason of his inability to appreciate the sanctity of an oath. After the witness had testified to facts very damaging to appellant, on cross-examination he testified that he didn’t know what it was to tell the truth, didn’t know what an oath was, nor what would happen to him if he testified falsely. The court overruled a motion to exclude his testimony from the jury. After a short recess of court, and after talking with the State’s attorney, the witness was again, examined, and stated that he did understand the nature of an oath.

¶3 We think the matter of his qualification as a witness rested in the sound discretion of the court. Payne v. State, 177 Ark. 413, 6 S. W. (2d) 832; Yother v. State, 167 Ark. 492, 268 S. W. 861; Sanders v. State, 175 Ark. 61, 296 S. W. 70; Durham v. State, 179 Ark. 508, 16 S. W. (2d) 991.

¶4 Affirmed.

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