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2 Ala. App. 139

Wray v. State

Alabama Court of Appeals

Decided December 21, 1911

Alabama Court of Appeals · decided 1911-12-21

Heard before Hon. M. Frank Cabalan. From a conviction for assault and battery defendant appeals.

Key passage — most relied on by later courts

“competent to show what was done and said by those present during the commission of the assault, both as directly going to the character of the assault and as part of the res gestae.”

quoted by 1 later decision, including 586 So. 2d 1003 - Pope v. State

Relies on Braham v. State · Moulton v. State · Martin v. State

Good law ✅— No negative treatment on recordhow we know

Affirmed · Decided 1911-12-21

How this case has been cited

Cited by 11 later decisions — most recently August 1991

11 state decisions

40191119201930194019501960197019801990decided

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 →

PELHAM, J.

¶1The amended affidavit charged offenses of equal degree subject to the same punishment, and was not subject to the demurrers interposed. Such offenses may be charged in the alternative.—Code 1907, §§ 6303, 7151; Bonner v. The State, 97 Ala. 47; McClellan v. State, 118 Ala. 122; Sims v. State, 135 Ala. 61.

¶2Under the charge preferred the defendant could be convicted of assault-and battery.Smith v. State, 123 Ala. 64.

¶3*142It was competent to show what was -done and said by those present during the commission of the assault, both as directly going to- the character of the assault and as part of the res- gestae.Smith v. State, 123 Ala. 64.

¶4The objections as to the questions asked the witness Fulton about a discussion and what was said at another time than on the occasion of the assault, and subsequent to the assault, were properly sustained. The question asked this witness, “Did not Mr. Barber have a hatchet and expect outsiders?” called for testimony by the witness of the mental status of.another person, and an objection to it was properly sustained. What the witness told an officer or others after the assault was not admissible.

¶5It was not proper to allow the prosecuting witness to testify, on cross-examination, to his uncommunicated purpose or secret intent in having the hatchet, nor to elicit from him what he swore on the subject in a former trial. The court committed no error in refusing to allow the defendant to extend the cross-examination of the prosecuting witness to inquiries about immaterial matters, or in refusing to allow questions which had been fully answered.Moulton v. State, 88 Ala. 116; Martin v. State, 104 Ala. 78; Braham v. State, 143 Ala. 28; Newman v. State, 160 Ala. 102.

¶6It was immaterial that some case against the defendant (the record does not disclose that it had any connection with the particular offense for which the defendant was on trial) had been nolle prossed in the police court, and the court correctly refused to allow defendant, when being examined as a witness, to testify to the fact, if it was a fact.

¶7*143Whether or not the witness Fulton had a pistol on his person the day before the trial while in court was entirely immaterial and irrelevant to the issues.

¶8The portion of the court’s oral charge on the question of alibi to which exception was reserved is free from error.—Jacks v. State, 117 Ala. 155.

¶9No error being shown by the record, the case will be affirmed.

¶10Affirmed.

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