Lee v. State
| Decision Date | 05 February 1923 |
| Docket Number | 22962 |
| Citation | 94 So. 889,130 Miss. 852 |
| Court | Mississippi Supreme Court |
| Parties | LEE v. STATE |
September 1922
January 1920
HOMICIDE. Error to refuse submission of manslaughter in murder trial where elements present in testimony.
In a trial for murder, if there are any elements of manslaughter under any of the testimony in the case, it is error to refuse the defendant an instruction submitting to the jury the issue of manslaughter.
APPEAL from circuit court of Alcorn county, HON. C. P. LONG, Judge.
Herman Lee was convicted of murder, and he appeals. Reversed and remanded.
Reversed and remanded.
Ely B. Mitchell, for appellant.
C. E. Dorroh, assistant attorney-general, for the state.
No brief found in the record for counsel on either side.
The appellant was convicted of murder, and sentenced to the penitentiary for life, and from this conviction and sentence he prosecuted this appeal.
As to what happened at the scene of the shooting, the state offered the testimony of only one witness, a negro woman at whose house the killing occurred. This witness testified that the defendant's wife was visiting in her room, and while she was there the deceased, Dan Jordan, also came in; that the deceased remained in the room for quite a while in conversation with these women; that while he was standing before a heater with his overcoat on his left arm, the defendant came to the door of an adjoining room and called his wife; that he then came to the door of her room and knocked and asked whether his wife was there; that before they could answer he pushed or broke the door open and rushed in with a pistol in his hand; that he caught his wife and threatened to shoot her, also snapped the pistol at her; that she separated defendant and his wife and then pushed the wife out of the room through a door; that he then turned and caught the deceased by the collar, pushed him back into the kitchen, and shot him five times; that the deceased had no weapon and made no demonstration toward the defendant, but, at the time he was attacked, was standing before a heater with his overcoat on his left arm and his right hand down by his side.
The defendant testified that he went to this house looking for his wife; that he stepped up on the porch and knocked on the door of the west room; that he heard his wife whispering in the room, and he then looked through a crack in the door and saw his wife and Dan Jordan, the deceased, in bed together that he then went to the door of the east room and knocked; that Della Jones, the state's witness, came to the door, and he asked her whether his wife was in the house; that she told him his wife was not there, and after some argument about it she closed and locked the door; that he then looked through the crack in the door again and saw that his wife and the deceased had gotten...
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Pinkney v. State
...is of the opinion that such an instruction is justified by the evidence." See Dase v. State, 356 So.2d 1179 (Miss.1978); Lee v. State, 130 Miss. 852, 94 So. 889 (1923); and other cases to the same effect which are too numerous to Lanier, 450 So.2d at 79. In Lanier we held that a manslaughte......
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...the evidence was insufficient to prove murder, but that the jury could find the defendant guilty of manslaughter. In Lee v. State, 130 Miss. 852, 854, 94 So. 889, 890 (1923), we '(W)e think the manslaughter instruction should have been granted, and that under all the testimony in this case ......