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95 Ala. 17

Jackson v. State

Supreme Court of Alabama

Decided December 15, 1891

Supreme Court of Alabama · decided 1891-12-15

FROM the District Court of Lauderdale and Colbert. Tried before the Hou. W. P. Chitwood.

Relies on Elam v. State · Hughes v. State · Smith v. State

Cited in Black's (1910)’s definition of “Election”

Good law ✅— No negative treatment on recordhow we know

Decided 1891-12-15

How this case has been cited

Cited by 5 later decisions — most recently March 2006

5 state decisions

20189119001910192019301940195019601970198019902000decided

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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Per Curiam.

¶1The only question presented by the rulings of the lower court is, whether the State made an election to prosecute for one act, and afterwards proceeded to elicit evidence concerning another. The beneficent purpose of the rule which requires an election is, that the defendant shall not be prejudiced in the minds of the jury by the introduction of evidence of offenses for which he is not on trial. The term elect implies a knowledge of facts which go to make up two or more offenses. And while a solicitor may, by his own acts and questions, involuntarily effect an election; yet, to hold him to have elected to proceed for a certain offense, he must have learned enough to enable him to individualize the transaction, and then pursue his inquiry with a view of learning the details and particulars of the act or transaction thus individualized. To hold him to an election without going this far, would, in many cases, amount to a denial of justice. Peacher v. State, 61 Ala. 22; Smith v. State, 52 Ala. 384; Hughes v. State, 35 Ala. 351; Cochran v. State, 30 Ala. 542; Elam v. State, 26 Ala. 48.

¶2Under the rule laid down, we hold that the solicitor had *19not elected to prosecute for tbe shooting which took place on Friday. There is nothing in the answers of the witness to questions asked, which call for the particulars or details of that shooting. We discover no error in the record.

¶3Affirmed.

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