Dabney v. State

• Citation: 33 So. 973,82 Miss. 252
• Court: United States State Supreme Court of Mississippi
• Decision Date: 31 March 1903
• Parties: SAMUEL DABNEY v. STATE OF MISSISSIPPI

33 So. 973

82 Miss. 252

SAMUEL DABNEY v. STATE OF MISSISSIPPI

Supreme Court of Mississippi

March 31, 1903

March 1903

FROM the circuit court of Adams county. HON. JEFF TRULY, Judge.

Dabney appellant, was indicted, tried and convicted of rape, and appealed to the supreme court.

On the trial a witness was permitted to testify, over defendant's objection, that he, the witness, lived in an adjoining room to the prosecutrix and that his trunk was broken open and a suit of clothes stolen therefrom by defendant about the time the woman claimed to have been raped.

Reversed and remanded.

R. L Jones and A. Jones, for appellant.

The court erred in admitting evidence for the state as to defendant's stealing clothes from the house of prosecutrix, and thereby biasing the jury against him and causing it to convict him on general principles because he seemed guilty of larceny, which crime probably furnished the motive for his being prosecuted.

J. N. Flowers, assistant attorney general, for appellee.

The testimony about the clothes being stolen was competent, since it helped to establish the identity of the accused.

OPINION

WHITFIELD, C. J.

It was error to admit the testimony as to the appellant's breaking into the trunk and stealing the clothes therefrom. There are cases in which it is competent to prove the commission of other crimes, and the principle within which this proof is allowed is very clearly stated in Rice's Evidence, vol. 3, c. 25. Such proof is allowed where the different crimes are parts of a system of crimes. An illustration of this is the case of Regina v Geering, 18 L. J. M. C., 215. That was the case of a woman indicted for poisoning her husband in September, 1848, and the question was whether the poison was accidentally or intentionally administered, and it was held competent to show that three sons had been poisoned by the administration of the same poison in December, 1848, March, 1849, and April, 1849, and that defendant had prepared the meals containing the poison for all four of the poisoned persons. Where one crime is shown to be intimately connected with another, so as to furnish the motive for the commission of the crime charged, it is permitted to prove such other crime. We select two of the best statements we have found of the exceptions to the rule; one contained in the opinion of Agnew, J., in Shaffner v. The Commonwealth, 72 Pa. 60, 13 Am. Rep., 649, set out on page 209 of volume 3 of Rice on Evidence; and the other contained in the opinion of Judge Dickson in State v. Raymond, 53 N.J.L. 260, 21 A. 328, set out at page 212 in Rice's work, supra. The former is as follows: "To make one criminal act evidence of another, a connection between them must have existed in the mind of the actor, linking them together for some purpose he intended to accomplish; or it must be necessary to identify the person of the actor by a connection which shows that he who committed the one must have done the other. Without this obvious connection, it is not only unjust to the prisoner to compel him to acquit himself of two offenses instead of one, but is detrimental to justice, to burden a trial with multiplied issues that tend to confuse and mislead the jury. The most guilty criminal may be innocent of other offenses charged against him, of which, if fairly tried, he might acquit himself. From the nature and prejudicial character of such evidence it is obvious that it should not be received unless the mind plainly perceives that the commission of the one tends by a visible connection to prove the commission of the other by the prisoner. ...