Flowers v. State, 46226
| Decision Date | 01 February 1971 |
| Docket Number | No. 46226,46226 |
| Citation | 243 So.2d 564 |
| Parties | Mary Elizabeth FLOWERS v. STATE of Mississippi. |
| Court | Mississippi Supreme Court |
D. M. Anderson, Newton, for appellant.
A. F. Summer, Atty. Gen., by James W. Haddock, Sp. Asst. Atty. Gen., Jackson, for appellee.
Mary Elizabeth Flowers was indicted, tried, convicted and sentenced for the crime of manslaughter in the Circuit Court of Newton County, Mississippi. The indictment was framed under the terms of Section 2226, Mississippi Code 1942 Annotated (1956), for the killing of a human being, without malice, in the heat of passion, by the use of a dangerous weapon, without authority of law and not in necessary self-defense.
The circumstances leading to the indictment of the defendant may be summarized as follows. On the night of September 3, 1969, the appellant went to the home of Mrs. Judy Bishop and advised her that she had shot her boyfriend and requested Mrs. Bishop to assist her in getting help 'to save him.' Mrs. Bishop took the defendant to the home of the deputy sheriff, Charles Reeves, where the defendant told the officer that she had shot Isaiah Patrick and, without being questioned, she told the following story. 'She said, 'He told me that he had another girl friend that had a car and she would let me use it, and that's where I've been.' Said, 'I didn't have anything, I was just an old and worn out gal,' * * *. 'That's all. I just couldn't take it, Mr. Charles. I told him to shut up and he said, 'What you going to do about it?' * * * I told him to shut up again and he didn't. He repeated the same thing he had said to me, and when he did, I reached for that old 12 over in the corner and let him have it." There was no objection made to this statement nor to the questions asked about the statement. The officers testified as to the condition of the room where the shooting occurred. The defendant turned the shotgun over to the deputy sheriff who delivered it to the sheriff. The sheriff arrived a short time after the deputy sheriff and defendant returned to her home. An ambulance was summoned and the wounded Isaiah Patrick was first taken to the Newton County Hospital where he was examined by Dr. Austin, and taken then to the Veterans Hospital in Jackson where he died twelve days later. The sheriff arrested the defendant at her home the night of the shooting and, before he questioned her, he warned her as to her constitutional rights. He testified that the defendant told him about the same story that she told the deputy sheriff. Mr. Garvin, a policeman, testified without objection to the same story told to the sheriff.
The appellant contends on appeal that the introduction of two written records with the consent of the court over the objection of the appellant was reversible error. The first record was the death certificate which not only showed the date of the death of deceased, but indicated the method of his demise, namely: 'Shot by second person.'
The second record was a sixty-one page medical record from the University Hospital which included an 'Autopsy Protocol.' This was a record of an autopsy performed on the body of the deceased, Isaiah Patrick, by doctors at the hospital, and it showed the cause of death to be 'gunshot wound to head.'
Neither of these records was introduced as a part of the testimony of the persons who made them. On was presented by the wife of the deceased as the death certificate and the...
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Birkhead v. State
...803(9) provides no exclusions to its hearsay exception. ¶ 32. Birkhead and the dissent rely upon the pre-Rules case of Flowers v. State, 243 So.2d 564 (Miss.1971), for the proposition that “death certificates could be introduced into evidence but used only to show ‘the physical cause of dea......
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Birkhead v. State, No. 2007-KA-00666-SCT (Miss. 2/19/2009), 2007-KA-00666-SCT.
...allows a hearsay exception regarding records of vital statistics. In the alternative, the State agrees with Birkhead that this Court, in Flowers v. State, held that the introduction of a death certificate is permitted, but its use is limited to showing the physical cause of death. Flowers v......
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Gossett v. State, 92-KA-00413-SCT
...death. While it was error to admit the autopsy report without producing the author, we conclude that it was harmless. In Flowers v. State, 243 So.2d 564, 565 (Miss.1971), this Court found error when the trial court admitted an autopsy report into evidence through the testimony of individual......
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Gilleylen v. State
...would violate rights of the defendant under the State (Second 26) and Federal (Sixth Amendment) Constitutions. See Flowers v. State, 243 So.2d 564 (Miss.1971) and Spears v. State, 241 So.2d 148 The facts in this case are unusual in that there are two defenses offered by the defendant to the......