Eddins v. State

• Citation: 110 Miss. 780,70 So. 898
• Court: United States State Supreme Court of Mississippi
• Decision Date: 06 March 1916
• Parties: EDDINS v. STATE

70 So. 898

110 Miss. 780

EDDINS v. STATE

Supreme Court of Mississippi

March 6, 1916

March 1916

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

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

Reversed and remanded.

Wells May & Sanders, McFarland & Brown and McBeath & Miller, for appellant.

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

OPINION

COOK, P. J.

We have read the evidence in this case with great care, and, taking the view of the state, we believe that the jury was warranted in finding the defendant guilty of murder.

If each assignment of error is considered alone, and without reference to the other alleged errors of the court, it may be that the judgment of the trial court would have to be affirmed.

If we take the record as a completed history of the trial, and consider every incident thereof in its relation to the whole, we find ourselves impressed with a belief that appellant did not, and could not, have obtained a fair consideration of his case by an impartial jury to be drawn from the district of the county in which he was tried.

In the first place the sheriff and the circuit court clerk who took part in the selection of the venire for the week, from which was selected the grand jury and the trial jury, were kinsmen of the deceased. In the next place, it was shown that a majority of the names put into the jury box were persons residing in the supervisor's district in which the homicide occurred. In the third place, the court refused to quash the jury box, which was error, but after a venire to try defendant was drawn from that box--an unlawful box--the court, upon motion of defendant, quashed the venire, and announced to the veniremen then sitting in the court-room that they were not excused, but they would "sit steady in the boat," or words to that effect. A new venire was ordered, whereupon the sheriff, a kinsman of deceased proceeded to resummon fifty-five of the same men to try the defendant. This, every lawyer will appreciate, was a serious blow to the defendant, being compelled to select a jury from a lot of men whom he had rejected, and who knew he had, in effect, said he did not want on a jury to try his case. Previous to this unfortunate incident, and in the early part of the game, the defendant had asked for a change of venue, which had been overruled by the court, whereupon, appreciating that he was "up against it" if he should be compelled to select a jury from the very men he had openly discarded, the defendant renewed his motion for a change of venue, which was again promptly overruled. We are constrained to believe that the court "held the defendant's nose to the...