Leflore v. State
| Decision Date | 28 May 1945 |
| Docket Number | 35788. |
| Citation | 197 Miss. 337,22 So.2d 368 |
| Court | Mississippi Supreme Court |
| Parties | LEFLORE v. STATE. |
G. J. Thornton and D. E. Crawley, both of Kosciusko, for appellant.
Greek L. Rice, Atty. Gen., and R. O. Arrington, Asst. Atty. Gen for appellee.
At the September 1943 term of the Circuit Court of Attala County appellant, Ned Leflore, was jointly indicted with his sisters, Johnnie D. Leflore and Annie Thornton, for the murder of another negro, Cleveland Guess. A motion for a severance was sustained, and Ned Leflore, on a separate trial, was convicted of manslaughter; whereupon he appealed to this Court. We reversed and remanded the cause for a new trial, because of error in sustaining a motion by the State to permit the jury to view and inspect the scenes of the crime, over the objection of the defendant, because the application therefor was deficient.
In the opinion of the Court in the case referred to supra Leflore v. State, Miss., 18 So.2d 132, 134, occurs the following: The evidence in that trial, as set out in the opinion, will not be repeated here except insofar as may be necessary in the discussion of the present appeal. In the former trial the appellant testified; he did not testify in the present trial. His sister, Annie Thornton, indicted with him, did not testify on the former trial before the jury, but did testify in the present case.
Her testimony in the present trial was substantially the same as her testimony on the motion for a new trial before this Court in the record on the former appeal. According to her version, the happenings were strange and eventful scenes, and her version and the version of appellant simply cannot both be true, in our opinion. Her evidence, if believable, would tend to show that appellant did not kill deceased, who, she says, was the victim of two white men, whom she named, under the following circumstances. She and the deceased had been sweethearts for some time, and she had also been bestowing her favors on one of the white men for some time. On the night of the slaying, apparently shortly before two o'clock, she and the deceased were in bed, and these two white men forcibly invaded her home, which was also the home of appellant, in his absence, and upon discovery of deceased in this amatory situation with the witness, proceeded to up-braid him for disregarding a warning to stay away from the witness on pain of death. Deceased, she stated, answered to the effect that they should not bother him as he was with his color. Thereupon, she said, these two white men beat him out of the bed, through her mother's room, out into the backyard, and that she heard a singletree rattling after they had left her room, in which she remained during the attack on the deceased. The next day she said, a blue singletree was missing. They left deceased out in the yard groaning and came back into the house again, where one entered the bed with witness and the other with her sister, departing in about thirty minutes. She then got the clothes of deceased and went out into the yard, where deceased was thrashing around and groaning. She dressed him and left him there, returned to the house, and presently his groans ceased.
Some little time later the mother of appellant and his brother, with the children of the brother, came to their house, and although having to pass near where deceased was lying, did not see him, or hear him. When they entered, some time before appellant's return home, they were told nothing of the scenes just above detailed, the witness saying that she was afraid to do so in consequence of threats made by these white men. Yet, she and her sister, who did not testify, were then in the privacy of their home and with members of the family on whose fidelity normal people would have relied even in the face of threats, and when the tragedy, if indeed it had been occurred, was strong upon them.
She contradicted herself somewhat when she was testifying as to the arrival of appellant, stating one time that he came into the house, exclaiming he had shot somebody--and another time he came into the house, obtained his pistol, went out, and she heard a shot, and then he came in and said that he had shot somebody. Witness had told appellant nothing about the white men or deceased having been there, and did not then. They, including the sister and the mother, with the aid of a lamp, proceeded, and to the sister's surprise and that of the others, to discover that appellant had shot the deceased. The appellant said: 'Wonder what he is doing out here this time of night?' His mother replied 'I don't know.' His sisters said nothing, so far as the record shows.
The appellant and his two sisters, jointly indicted with him, instead of bringing the body of their allegedly old friend into the house and doing what they could for him, transported him, in a dying condition, to a point by a public road three-quarters of a mile away, and stayed, it was said, by the deceased until he was dead. This road paralleled the Big Black River at that point.
It will be noted that there is no explanation as to how this man, either dead or dying, arose from where he lay unconscious when this witness dressed him after the departure of the white men, so that appellant could shoot him twice under the circumstances of his confession to the sheriff. The explanation made that this old friend was carried by appellant and his sisters to the roadside across from Big Black River instead of into the house so that he would be accessible to the doctor, is also incredible, since appellant nor anyone else went for the doctor, but remained with the dying man until he died there. Appellant then left, never went to see the doctor on whose place he lived, and was arrested the following night beyond the village of West, apparently a fugitive.
The dead body was found where it was left, by the roadside next morning, by a crew of road workers. They notified the sheriff of the county, who came at once to make an...
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Scott v. State
...combination in the wrong done as to show criminal liability, although he approves of the act'. Two years earlier, in Leflore v. State, 197 Miss. 337, 22 So.2d 368 (1945) ... the Mississippi Supreme Court read the other side of the coin. There a dead body, obviously dispatched by violent mea......
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Butler v. State, 45096
...to believe that the felon was in the house upon whose door was the blood. Miss. Code 1942 Ann. § 2470 (1956); see Leflore v. State, 197 Miss. 337, 22 So.2d 368 (1945). Mrs. Creel and Patsy made positive and unequivocal in-court identifications of Butler as the offender. He had stalked that ......
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Davis v. United States
...combination in the wrong done as to show criminal liability, although he approves of the act\'." Two years earlier, in Leflore v. State, 197 Miss. 337, 22 So.2d 368 (1945) which the present writer prosecuted in his halcyon days, as District Attorney the Mississippi Supreme Court read the ot......
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Amos v. State, 45786
...the State of Mississippi both guarantee only that citizens shall be secure from unreasonable searches and seizures. In Leflore v. State, 197 Miss. 337, 22 So.2d 368 (1945), we pointed out that to follow a bloody trail from the body of the victim to the scene of the homicide was not such an ......