Jones v. State, 47613

• Decision Date: 28 January 1974
• Docket Number: No. 47613,47613
• Citation: 288 So.2d 833
• Parties: Wilson JONES v. STATE of Mississippi.
• Court: Mississippi Supreme Court

Page 833

288 So.2d 833

Wilson JONES v. STATE of Mississippi.

No. 47613.

Supreme Court of Mississippi.

Jan. 28, 1974.

A. S. Scott, Jr., Laurel, for appellant.

A. F. Summer, Atty. Gen., by John C. Underwood, Jr., Sp. Asst. Atty. Gen., Jackson, for appellee.

INZER, Justice:

Appellant Wilson Jones was indicted, tried and convicted in the Circuit Court of Jasper County for the murder of his wife. He was sentenced to serve a life term in the State Penitentiary. From this conviction and sentence he appeals. We affirm.

This is an unusual case in some repects. The facts as stated in appellant's brief are as follows:

'The appellant shot and killed his wife, and the mother of his three children. This was in cold blood. Then he picked up his paramour and left the Paulding area for his job of work at a textile mill in Stonewall, Mississippi.

'He was scheduled to report for work shortly before midnight and was preparing to enter the plant when he was arrested by the Clarke County Sheriff.

'This sheriff had been alerted by the Jasper County Sheriff's office to be on the look out for appellant.

'Almost as soon as he was arrested, the sheriff of Jasper County arrived on the scene; he took appellant into his custody.

'On being asked if he had killed his wife, the appellant denied doing so. But within approximately thirty minutes, on the return trip to Jasper, he confessed his total involvement. This confession was made to Tom Green, Sheriff of Jasper County.

'Then before the night was over, the appellant told everyone who asked him what he had done. He had used a shot gun and discarded it before picking up his doxy to take her to work. He recovered this for the sheriff.

'All witnesses testified that the appellant appeared perfectly normal during his confessions. Included in this array were various deputies and one man who now serves as the Mayor of Bay Springs.

'The defense drew a line on this sort of testimony. We question whether a person can do this sort of thing and then appear perfectly normal unless he is mad.

'The only explanation the appellant could offer was that he was under a spell, a hex; he said he had been voodooed.

'We took Parsons v. State, an old Alabama case involving the same thing and went to trial.

'There were ten members of the Negro race on the jury. They convicted appellant. He was sentenced to the penitentiary for the remainder of his life.'

Appellant's assignment of error is as follows:

1. The rule in M'Naghten is archaic and the fiction that Mississippi in truth adopts this rule should be disabused.

2. The lower court did err when it failed to require the prosecution to overcome the reasonable doubt created of the defendant's guilt.

3. Rule 14 of the Uniform Circuit Court Rules is not constitutional.

Appellant's first assignment of error is in reality not an assignment of error. Appellant does not charge that the trial court committed any error in regard to the instruction granted on the issue of insanity. Appellant admits that what he is striving for under this assignment is an opinion of this Court abandoning the M'Naghten rule, or at least to follow what he contends is the true M'Naghten rule. If we were disposed to abandon the M'Naghten rule, which we are not at the present time, appellant has furnished us with a very unsatisfactory set of facts upon which to travel. The only proof relative to any insanity on the part of appellant was his own testimony. He testified that a spell came upon him on the night that he killed his wife. He said he knew it was wrong to kill his wife but he could not resist the power that told him to do so. He also testified that he did not know right from wrong when he killed her. He thought someone unknown had voodooed him and cast this spell upon him. While he said he believed in voodooism, he had scant knowledge of it. He had not been taught anything about it and had attended no meetings where the art was practiced. He had only heard it talked about in the community. The question immedicately arises was this alleged spell the product of a mental disorder or was it the product of something else, perhaps ignorance or superstition. He does not contend that he ever suffered from a mental disorder prior to the night that he killed his wife and said that the spell that he was under was completely lifted three days later when he vomited some strange substance that resembled hair. Since then apparently he has been normal. Counsel for appellant seems to conclude that a sane person would not sneak up to a window in the nighttime and shoot his wife with a shotgun in the presence of his children. While there is...