Brown v. State
| Decision Date | 11 January 1904 |
| Citation | 36 So. 73,83 Miss. 645 |
| Court | Mississippi Supreme Court |
| Parties | THOMAS BROWN v. STATE OF MISSISSIPPI |
October 1903
FROM the circuit court of Montgomery county. HON. WILLIAM F STEVENS, Judge.
Brown appellant, was indicted, tried, and convicted of murder, and appealed to the supreme court.
The facts upon which the decision rests are stated in the opinion of the court.
Reversed and remanded.
G. A. McLean, for appellant.
The facts in this case are that this defendant has necessarily been kept in a distant jail in order to protect his life from mob violence, and when he was carried to the scene of the difficulty it required six men in the day time and sixteen men at fright to guard the jail in order to protect him.
The fact of the deceased's family being large, having six brothers, and they having lived in the town where the difficulty occurred, the testimony of several reputable witnesses that great prejudice exists against appellant and that he could not obtain a fair and impartial trial in Montgomery county, and the further fact that an innocent negro was killed by a mob by reason of the prejudice against this appellant, would seem to be sufficient for this change of venue.
We submit that the facts are as strong and weighty as the facts in the case of Saffold v. State, 76 Miss. 259, which was appealed from the same county.
William Williams, attorney general, and Monroe McClurg, for appellee.
The record shows that a number of witnesses, to wit, twenty-three, testified before the trial court on the motion for a change of venue, that appellant could have a fair and impartial trial in the county in which the offense was charged to have been committed.
Many of these witnesses had been selected and impaneled as regular jurors for the term at which appellant was tried and convicted, and testified that they had formed and expressed no opinion as to the guilt or innocence of the accused (appellant here), all of them stating that there was no reason why the defendant could not have a fair and impartial trial in Montgomery county.
The court will be impressed with the fact that there was no abuse of judicial discretion in refusing a change of venue, and unless there was an abuse of judicial discretion this court should not reverse on this ground. Stewart v. State, 50 Miss. 587; Bishop v. State, 62 Miss. 289; Cheatham v. Slate, 67 Miss. 335.
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...uninfluenced. Tennison v. State, 79 Miss. 708, 31 So. 421; Magness v. State, 103 Miss. 30, 60 So. 8; Keeton v. State, 96. So. 180; Brown v. State, 83 Miss. 645. right to trial by an impartial jury is guaranteed by the organic law of the state, and when it is doubtful that such a jury can be......
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...crystallized into a fixed belief of the defendant's guilt. This sentiment was made evident by threatened mob violence. In Brown v. State, 83 Miss. 645, 36 So. 73 (1904) the accused, inferentially a black man, was convicted of murder. The deceased was a member of a large family, presumably w......
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