Bacot v. State

• Decision Date: 15 November 1909
• Docket Number: 13,980
• Court: Mississippi Supreme Court
• Parties: CHARLES BACOT v. STATE OF MISSISSIPPI

50 So. 500

96 Miss. 125

CHARLES BACOT v. STATE OF MISSISSIPPI

No. 13,980

Supreme Court of Mississippi

November 15, 1909

FROM the circuit court of Pike county, HON. MOYSE H. WILKINSON Judge.

Bacot appellant, was indicted and tried for the murder of one Thomas Brown, was convicted of manslaughter, sentenced to the penitentiary for a term of ten years and appealed to the supreme court. The opinion of the court states the facts upon which the case was decided.

Reversed.

Price &amp Whitfield and Clem V. Ratcliff, for appellant.

This fourth instruction is indisputably wrong and reversibly erroneous. Several witnesses, laymen, testified for the defendant, that the defendant was insane or was not able to distinguish right from wrong when he killed Brown. The state then put on the stand Dr. Beacham, a country physician, in rebuttal, and some laymen. Beacham was a young practicing physician without experience in mental diseases. The court instructed the jury that in passing upon the evidence given by a nonexpert, as to his opinion of the sanity or insanity of a person, it must be governed by the facts and circumstances as related by the non-expert witness, upon which he based his opinion, and judge whether or not the party charged with crime had mind enough to know right from wrong at the time he committed the crime. This was to single out Beacham, and say to an unlearned jury that he was an expert, and to set him up against the other witnesses as one to be relied upon from the standpoint of his opinion only. This was to tell the jury that the laymen, with abundant knowledge of the defendant, all his life, and opportunity to know, could have no opinion that could go to the jury, but that the jury should substitute their opinion for such laymen's opinions, and in so doing they could not go beyond the facts and circumstances detailed by the witness. In the first place Beacham was not an expert. Russell v State, 53 Miss. 367; Wood v. State, 58 Miss. 741.

In Reid v. State, 62 Miss. 405, this court said: "It is competent for a nonexpert witness * * * who has had opportunity to observe the conversation, conduct or manner of the defendant, to state his opinion or belief of the sanity or insanity of the accused, in connection with the facts upon which it is based. Such a witness may give his opinion or belief from facts stated and known by him." If the fourth instruction be correct, why should the law allow a nonexpert to give his opinion or belief at all; why not say, that all nonexperts may state the facts and circumstances known to them, but no opinion or belief based upon such facts. Many of the witnesses testified from acts and conduct and observation of the defendant from long association, close personal observation, running back to childhood, for many years, and perhaps could only give a portion of the facts and circumstances upon which our opinion was based. Many of the facts, acts and circumstances going to make up the basis of such a belief or opinion, may have been lost to memory, and oftentimes are, yet the opinion formed from the various things done in life is not lost; yet the court charged the jury that in passing upon the opinion of such witness they must be governed by and confined to the facts and circumstances as related by the witness, upon which he based his opinion, and that the jury must judge whether the defendant had mind enough to know right from wrong. This was in effect to state to the jury that no such witness could have an opinion which the jury should consider, and that though the facts and circumstances may have been sufficient, when taken in connection with the knowledge and opportunity to observe the defendant and intelligence of the witness, for the witness to have an opinion, yet the jury should not regard such witness as having an opinion or belief on the subject.

In Wood v. State, 58 Miss. 741, the court said: "How much weight is to be given to the opinion of a witness on the question of insanity depends, like the weight to be given to all other opinions, upon the intelligence of the witness and his opportunities of observation; and while the testimony of a professional man, with equal opportunities, would ordinarily be more reliable than that of a nonprofessional, the testimony of an intelligent friend who had known the subject of the inquiry for years, might be more weighty than that of the most experienced expert who had seen him only since the condition of his intellect had become a matter of investigation. Craft and deceit might mislead the one into an error which the lifetime acquaintance and observation of the other would readily detect."

The instruction is on the weight of the evidence and is wrong and so narrows the defendant's defense that it cannot stand the test of the judicial mind. This instruction totally ignores and takes by exclusion from the jury a consideration of the intelligence of the witnesses, his opportunity to know, and confines the jury only to the facts and...