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38 La. Ann. 387

State v. Scott

Supreme Court of Louisiana

Decided April 15, 1886

Supreme Court of Louisiana · decided 1886-04-15

PPEAL from the Seventeenth District Court, Parish of East Baton Rouge. Burgess, J. The granting of a new trial, where the sole ground of the motion is that the verdict is contrary to the law and the evidence, is within the discretion of the lower court; and its action is not subject to review by this Court.

Good law ✅— No negative treatment on recordhow we know

Decided 1886-04-15

How this case has been cited

Cited by 3 later decisions — most recently January 1922

3 state decisions

1018861890190019101920decided

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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¶1The opinion of the Court was delivered by

Bermudez, C. J.

¶2The defendant was indicted for shooting with in-' tent to commit murder, found guilty and sentenced to two years at hard labor. He appeals.

¶3The record contains a bill of .exception to the refusal of the judge to grant a new trial and a motion in arrest of judgment.

¶4In the motion for a new trial complaint is made that important testimony was not given to the jury by reason of an error of the attorney for the defense, who had misunderstood the ruling of the judge touching its admission.

¶5We deem it unnecessary to pass upon this ground of complaint, as we rest our conclusion on the other.

¶6*388The -motion in arrest charges that the indictment is defective and illegal.

¶71. Because it does not contain the word “wilful.”

¶82. Because neither the shooting nor the intent is charged with having been done with malice aforethought.

¶9The accused is prosecuted under Sect. 791, R. S., and charged with intent to commit, murder. The indictment expressly charges that the defendant “feloniously did shoot with a dangerous weapon with intent to commit murder”

¶10The State claims that the case falls within the ruling in 36 Ann. 336, while counsel for the accused distinguishes between the cases to show that they do not clash.

¶11Considering the rulings in 33 Ann. 922; 36 Ann. 100, and in 37 Ann. 776, and Sect. 1048 of the Revised Statutes, we regard that invoked by the State as merely constituting res judie,ata, and do not propose to repeat it.

¶12We therefore conclude that the indictment is defective in not charging that the shooting was done also wilfully and with malice aforethought.

¶13It is therefore ordered and decreed that the verdict and sentence be avoided, annulled and reversed, and that the indictment be quashed, the accused to remain in custody to await the further action of the District Court of the Parish of East Baton Rouge-

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