Barron v. State

• Court: Mississippi Supreme Court
• Writing for the Court: POTTER, J.
• Citation: Barron v. State, 111 Miss. 231, 71 So. 374 (Miss. 1916)
• Decision Date: 17 April 1916
• Docket Number: 18754
• Parties: BARRON v. STATE

71 So. 374

111 Miss. 231

BARRON v. STATE

No. 18754

Supreme Court of Mississippi

April 17, 1916

APPEAL from the circuit court of Simpson county, HON. W. H. HUGHES Judge.

Will Barron was convicted of arson and appeals.

The facts are fully stated in the opinion of the court.

Reversed and remanded.

Hilton & Hilton, for appellant.

Lamar F. Easterling, Assistant Attorney-General., for the state.

OPINION

POTTER, J.

Will Barron, the appellant, was convicted of the crime of arson and sentenced to the penitentiary, from which judgment he appeals. The indictment charged that the defendant did unlawfully, etc., set fire to a certain barn, the property then and there of Nelson Payne.

The proof in this case is insufficient to establish the corpus delicti. In establishing the corpus delicti of the crime of arson, it is not only necessary for the state to prove that the property of the prosecutor named in the indictment was burned, but to establish, also, that the fire originated through a criminal agency.

The state has failed to establish in this case, beyond every reasonable doubt, as it is required to do by circumstances or otherwise, that the barn in question was burned through a criminal agency. The only testimony with reference to the burning of the barn is that it burned at a very early hour in the morning. There...