Hughes v. State
| Decision Date | 21 November 1979 |
| Docket Number | No. 51514,51514 |
| Parties | Joe HUGHES v. STATE of Mississippi. |
| Court | Mississippi Supreme Court |
Burdine & Austin, Curtis H. Austin, Columbus, for appellant.
A. F. Summer, Atty. Gen. by Robert D. Findley, Sp. Asst. Atty. Gen., Jackson, for appellee.
Before PATTERSON, C. J., and SUGG and COFER, JJ.
A verdict of guilty and a sentence of life imprisonment resulted from the non-capital murder trial of Joe Hughes in the Circuit Court of Noxubee County. Hughes appeals, assigning as error: (1) that the trial court erred in admitting Hughes' confession, (2) erred in refusing to grant a mistrial following an improper remark by a witness concerning the verdict of a coroner's inquest, and (3) erred in refusing a proffered instruction concerning Hughes' intoxication at the time of the offense. We affirm.
A substantially undisputed sequence of facts culminated in the death of Dillard Prisock. On Sunday, April 23, 1978, Andy Billups and Dillard Prisock met before noon and drove around in Winston County. Just outside of Louisville, they met Joe Hughes, who accompanied them as they traveled toward the Crawford community. The three drank liquor together from about noon onward that day as they "cruised" around.
Sometime after the trio had paused for gas and beer, they stopped by the side of the road, and Prisock and Hughes got out to relieve themselves. Billups heard Prisock cry out, and upon investigation discovered that Hughes had knocked Prisock down with a baseball bat. Hughes told Billups that he had done so because Prisock had pulled a knife on him; however, Billups did not see any weapon in Prisock's possession at any time that day. Apparently uninjured by the blow, Prisock got back in the car and continued down the road with Billups and Hughes.
Eventually the car became mired on a farm road running through a field in Noxubee County. Billups testified that he and Prisock jacked the car up to extricate it, but the jack slipped, causing a part of it to be lost. Darkness had fallen, and Prisock improvidently struck a match to locate the missing part. The match ignited the automobile's leaking gas tank, engulfing it in flames.
Consuming the remaining contents of a bottle of liquor, Hughes walked down the road with Prisock and Billups, who were "trying to figure out how . . . to get home." An argument between Prisock and Hughes ensued. It came to an end when, according to Billups, Hughes "pushed . . . Prisock down on the ground and . . . (cut) him across the face. . . ." Hughes then got up and asked Billups, "Is Mr. Prisock dead?" Throwing his knife away, Hughes followed Billups. They stopped at several houses before successfully soliciting a ride into town.
On Monday, April 23, 1978, Johnny Heard discovered Prisock's body in a ditch beside the farm road running through his field. The body lay about one-half a mile away from the charred automobile. Mr.Heard sat on the coroner's jury which determined the cause of death to have been lacerations about the throat and head. On Tuesday, April 25, 1978, authorities, with the help of Hughes, located a bloodstained knife in the soybean field several yards away from the site where the body was discovered.
The defendant testified. When asked on cross-examination, "what Andy (Billups) told happened and what you told happened sounds pretty much alike, doesn't it?" Hughes answered, "I guess so; yes, sir."
Indeed, Hughes' testimony closely resembles that of Billups. He admitted hitting Prisock with a bat during a roadside stop. Moreover, he admitted "cutting" Prisock with a knife. When asked why, Hughes answered:
Well, really, I don't know myself; I've been asking myself that, why did I cut him. I don't know. It wasn't because I 'sider myself bad or nothing like that. I just don't know why I cut him. If I said he kicked me or hit me or something, I would be lying, so I just don't know why I cut him.
Hughes also remembered getting $10 out of his victim's wallet and throwing the knife into the field.
Over objection by the defense, the trial court admitted handwritten and typewritten signed versions of the statement which Hughes had given in the presence of sheriff's deputy James Barnett. The statement is nearly identical to Hughes' testimony at trial.
It should be noted that an accused by becoming a witness at trial does not ipso facto waive his previous objection to the introduction of an out of court custodial admission. If the out of court admission was erroneously admitted, that error would be compounded by placing undue influence upon the accused to testify, thereby eroding the voluntariness of his testimony. Keys v. State, 283 So.2d 919, 927 (Miss.1973); People v. Spencer, 66 Cal.2d 158, 164, 57 Cal.Rptr. 163, 169, 424 P.2d 715, 719 (1967); Cf. Harrison v. United States, 392 U.S. 219, 88 S.Ct. 2008, 20 L.Ed.2d 1047 (1968) ().
Here, however, it does not appear that Hughes' out of court admission was erroneously admitted. Walker Tucker, an investigator for the Mississippi Highway Patrol, testified that upon arresting the appellant on the night of April 24, 1978, he advised him of his rights prior to escorting him out of his living room. In the police car outside the home, Tucker again read the appellant his rights, "one...
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