Horn v. State, 38612

• Decision Date: 02 February 1953
• Docket Number: No. 38612,38612
• Citation: 216 Miss. 439,62 So.2d 560
• Parties: HORN v. STATE.
• Court: Mississippi Supreme Court

Page 560

62 So.2d 560

216 Miss. 439

HORN v. STATE.

No. 38612.

Supreme Court of Mississippi.

Feb. 2, 1953.

Wm. S. Boyd, Jr., and Hester & Walker Laurel, for appellant.

J. P. Coleman, Atty. Gen., by Geo. H. Ethridge, Asst. Atty. Gen., for appellee.

ROBERDS, Presiding Justice.

Horn was convicted of manslaughter in the killing of Mat Musgrove by acts amounting to culpable negligence, Section 2232, Miss.Code 1942, and sentenced to the state penitentiary for two years.

He says the testimony was not sufficient to sustain the verdict of the jury. Since the case is to be retried we deem it advisable not to set out the testimony nor comment upon its weight and effect. It is sufficient to say that we have carefully read and considered it and that the testimony on behalf of the state amply warranted the finding of the jury. The jury had a right to, and evidently did, believe that evidence. This contention is not well taken.

He next urges a reversal and remand of the case because of a communication had between the bailiff in charge of the jury and the jury as now set out. The bailiff heard a knock on the juryroom door. He opened it and one of the jurors, while the other jurors were in the same room, asked the bailiff, who was also the deputy sheriff, what the penalty was for manslaughter. The bailiff, in his testimony, was not sure of the exact words used by him in his reply. At one place he testified he said 'I do not know unless it is from one to ten'. 'I wouldn't say whether I stated on the ten part whether it was years or whether I just said 'one to ten'.' Again he testified, 'I said 'I don't know, but the best of my remembrance it might be from one to ten', and I don't recall whether I put 'years' on the ten or not.' This transpired without the knowledge of the trial judge.

In about thirty minutes the jury brought in the following verdict: 'We, the Jury, find the defendant guilty as charged, and ask that he be given the mercy of the court.'

When this verdict was read the judge asked the jurors what they meant by requesting the mercy of the court, and the spokesman for the jurors, in the presence of the others, said they intended that to mean one year in the penitentiary.

In Wilkerson v. State, 78 Miss. 356, 29 So. 170, the accused was indicted for burglary and grand larceny. He was convicted of burglary and petit larceny and sentenced to the penitentiary for one year. About an hour and a half after the case had been submitted to the jury one of the jurors opened the door and asked a bailiff the difference between burglary and larceny and burglary and petit larceny, and the bailiff replied that the first would send him to the pentienitary and the second to the county farm. The conviction was for burglary and petit larceny, and the sentence was one year in the penitentiary. The court, in reversing the case for this action, used this language:

'We are of the opinion that the record sustains the presumption that the statement made to the jury by the bailiff may have had a decided effect upon the verdict. The jury had retired from the bar, and had been in consideration of the case for an hour and a half, and upon receiving the statement of Bond they immediately made up their verdict. According to the statement of Bond as to what the law of the case was, the verdict rendered was for a misdemeanor, or was so intended, while the crime proven, in any view of the evidence, was a felony. The statement of Bond was erroneous and untrue in law and in fact, but the mischief is not the less on that account. If it could be known, which it is now impossible to know, that the verdict when rendered, if no such statement had been...