Jenkins v. State

• Decision Date: 13 February 1911
• Citation: 98 Miss. 717,54 So. 158
• Court: Mississippi Supreme Court
• Parties: EUGENE JENKINS v. STATE

54 So. 158

98 Miss. 717

EUGENE JENKINS v. STATE

Supreme Court of Mississippi

February 13, 1911

October 1910

APPEAL from the circuit court of Pike county, HON. D. M. MILLER Judge.

Eugene Jenkins was convicted of carrying a concealed weapon and appeals. The facts are fully stated in the opinion of the court.

Reversed and remanded.

Clem V Ratcliff, for appellant.

Counsel for the state admit tat the action of the court in excluding the testimony as to threats, violence and abuse, and the subsequent exclusion of the confessions made under such circumstances, was correct. They desire to uphold the conviction on the evidence of Walker to whom a confession was purported to have been made. This cannot avail the prosecution since the purported confession to Walker was made subsequent to those to Brewer and Thompson, which were excluded because they were obtained unlawfully, and it was not shown that the evil effects and unlawful methods of obtaining the first confessions, making them incompetent, had been removed, when defendant was talking to Walker. See Reason v. State, 94 Miss. 290. The attorney-general concedes that appellant is correct in his position on the law, but they claim the facts do not justify the position taken. We submit that the record does show in every page thereof that every confession was obtained of defendant, by officers, after he had been taken as a prisoner, and unmercifully beaten by them and shot at, and scared almost to death, and that there is not a single particle of evidence upon which a verdict of guilty might rest except these confessions.

Next it is said by the attorney-general that the court should not reverse because the court admitted testimony that the defendant plead guilty in the justice court. Yet, he says that the plea of guilty ought not to be admitted. Walker testified that the defendant did plead guilty in the justice court. Brewer and Thompson testified that the defendant was not placed on the stand at all. If they tell the truth, he merely plead to the charge and did not testify and hence it was error to allow Walker to give in evidence his plea before the justice court. We understand the law to so hold. See Ireland v. The State, 89 Miss. 763. In this case the justice of the peace testified that the defendant entered a plea of guilty. In the instant case witness Walker testified that he plead guilty. If the justice of the peace cannot testify to such, certainly just an ordinary witness cannot do so.

We submit that the record totally fails to disclose guilt of the accused, and that he has been convicted solely and alone on the purported confessions obtained from him in the most cruel and inhuman manner, by several officers, and the accused was a mere negro boy.

We respectfully insist that the case ought to be reversed and remanded.

Jas. R. McDowell, assistant attorney-general, for appellee.

Counsel insists that there is error in the record, in this, that testimony was admitted to show that defendant pleaded guilty in the court below. I call special attention to the record. It will be seen that when Walker was on the stand he was asked if the defendant had testified in the lower court, and he answered that he had taken the stand and said that he was guilty. Of course, the testimony of a witness in the justice court can be proven on a trial in the circuit court, though a plea of guilty by a defendant in the justice court ought not to be admitted in evidence in the circuit court. When other witnesses took the stand it appeared from their testimony that the defendant did not take the stand as a witness, but simply entered a plea of guilty and the court very promptly and properly excluded this from the evidence, therefore, there is no ground for complaint on this point.

The record abundantly shows the guilt of the defendant; it shows that he had a pistol in his possession and either hid it by a fence, or dropped it there when he was running when he was being pursued. On the whole record the case should be affirmed. Counsel seems to overlook the fact the primary inquiry in this court is and should be the guilt or innocence of the accused. Instead of reviewing the record with that in view, he puts the judge, jury, witnesses and state's attorney on trial and tries to condemn some act of theirs, losing sight of the defendant's case entirely.

The defendant is clearly guilty and was legally convicted and the case should be affirmed.

OPINION

ANDERSON, J.

The appellant, Eugene Jenkins, a negro was convicted in the circuit court of Pike county of carrying, concealed about his person, a pistol, and appeals to this court. Brewer and Thompson, one a deputy sheriff and the other a constable conceiving that the appellant had a pistol concealed on his person, undertook to search him, when he fled. As he was fleeing, one of the officers shot at and missed him. The appellant ran about two hundred and fifty yards and stopped. These officers then went to him, and found that he had no...