State v. . Crowson

Smith, C. J., (after stating the case). The only point upon which stress is laid in the argument of prisoner’s counsel, and upon which the record calls on us .to decide, is the competency of the evidence of the prisoner’s act in conducting the officer to the brink of the stream where she last had the child, and to her remark about the drowning of negroes by herself. These are most clearly confessions — the act as expressive as words could be — of her having carried her boy to the place whence it seems to have been cast into the water and there disposed of it. It is not less apparent that these self-criminating facts were important elements in the proof of her guilt. The confessions, too, seem to be responsive, directly so, to the menace “that she had to tell what she had done with the child,” and to what had been previously said to her, that “if she could not show what she had done with it they would get after her about it.” The confession, to be admissible, must be voluntary, and not obtained by the influence of hope or fear applied by a third person to the prisoner’s mind, and this being, in its nature, preliminary to its being heard, is addressed to the *598 Judge, who admits or rejects as he may find the confession to have been superinduced by these motives. 1 Greenl. Ev., sec. 219. To the same effect are our own decisions. State v. Vann, 82 N. C., 631; State v. Sanders, 84 N. C., 728; State v. Efler, 85 N. C., 585; State v. Burgwyn, 87 N. C., 572. These cases-establish the doctrine also that while a ruling which undertakes to define the influence that excludes the confession, and does so erroneously, is the subject of an appellate revision, its exercise in bringing about the confession in a particular instance being a fact, is not subject to the corrective power of this Court. Now, the reception of the testimony in response to the question objected to (and the objection must extend to the evidence which it elicits) may admit of two interpretations— one, that the -receiving the evidence presupposes a ruling that it did not come from the influence brought to bear upon the prisoner; the other, that it was received without any determination of the preliminary question, actual or by implication. In a matter so serious, involving human life, we feel constrained to adopt the latter construction of the action of the Court, and to consider this duty of the Judge to have been overlooked. He might have ruled out the confession, so damaging to the prisoner in its influence upon the jurors in conducting them to their verdict. It is the well-merited commendation of our law that in its administration the same securities are provided for all who are accused of crime, and that all its requirements must be observed and a conviction had in subservience to them. Shocking as may be the act imputed, the guilt of the prisoner must be proved in accordance with the rules of evidence and upon a fair trial. This, in our opinion, she. has not had, and she is entitled to a venire de novo. *599 There is error in the particulars pointed out, and the prisoner must have a new trial, and to this end the verdict must be set aside. Error.