Hunt v. State
| Decision Date | 18 January 1915 |
| Docket Number | 17717 |
| Citation | 108 Miss. 588,67 So. 57 |
| Court | Mississippi Supreme Court |
| Parties | HUNT v. STATE |
APPEAL from the circuit court of Bolivar county. HON. W. A. ALCORN, Judge.
Will Hunt was convicted of murder and appeals.
Appellant was convicted of the murder of his wife, and sentenced to the penitentiary for life. There were no witnesses to the killing except the defendant himself. Immediately after the gunshot appellant gave the alarm that his wife had shot herself. She was found with the wound entering her head, the shot having taken an upward range. The appellant testified that his wife was drunk or drug-crazed, and had quarreled with him and gotten a shotgun and was attempting to shoot him, and as he was trying to take the gun away from her it fell to the floor and was discharged, and that the killing was accidental. The jury returned a verdict convicting appellant on circumstantial evidence, and he appeals.
Judgment reversed.
M. L. Kaufman and D. J. Allen, for appellant.
Geo. H. Ethridge, Assistant Attorney-General for the state.
We have carefully gone over all the evidence in this case, and we can find no single circumstance that points to the defendant's guilt with that degree of certainty which the law demands. Taking all of the circumstances together, there is no legal proof of guilt. The most that can be said for the state's case is that there were some suspicious circumstances proven against the defendant.
It is not the policy of the law to punish individuals for crime when the evidence fails to prove that a crime was committed. The evidence here fails in this particular, and the judgment of the trial court is reversed and the defendant discharged.
Reversed.
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Dean v. State
...Millard, 18 N.W. 562; Page v. State, 151 Miss. 151; Vaughn v. State, 19 Ala. 511, 993 So. 256; Davenport v. State, 144 Miss. 275; Hunt v. State, 108 Miss. 588; C. J. 935, sec. 2299. The alleged dying declaration is not competent for the following reasons: (a) it was not made at a time when ......
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Dean v. State
...... fails to prove the defendant guilty beyond every reasonable. doubt. . . State. v. Sullivan, 17 A. L. R. 905; People v. Millard, 18 N.W. 562;. Page v. State, 151 Miss. 151; Vaughn v. State, 19 Ala. 511,. 993 So. 256; Davenport v. State, 144 Miss. 275; Hunt v. State, 108 Miss. 588; 16 C. J. 935, sec. 2299. . . The. alleged dying declaration is not competent for the following. reasons: (a) it was not made at a time when the declarant was. under the solemn sense of impending death; (b) the evidence. shows that the deceased was not ......
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...most that can be said for the state's case is that there were some suspicious circumstances proven against the defendant. Hunt v. State, 108 Miss. 588, 67 So. 57 (1915). Givens also cites an older case, City of Hazlehurst v. Byrd, 101 Miss. 57, 57 So. 360 (1912), to support his suggestion t......