Mackmasters v. State

• Decision Date: 23 November 1902
• Citation: Mackmasters v. State, 81 Miss. 374, 33 So. 2 (Miss. 1902)
• Court: Mississippi Supreme Court
• Parties: SAMUEL MACKMASTERS v. STATE OF MISSISSIPI

33 So. 2

81 Miss. 374

SAMUEL MACKMASTERS v. STATE OF MISSISSIPI

Supreme Court of Mississippi

November 23, 1902

October 1902

FROM the circuit court of Tishomingo county HON. EUGENE O. SYKES Judge.

Mackmasters appellant, was indicted and tried for the murder, October 27 1901, of his own father, Uriah Mackmasters, he was convicted of manslaughter, and appealed to the supreme court. The facts upon which the decision turned are sufficiently apparent from the opinion of the court.

Reversed and remanded.

L. E. Sawyer and E. S. Candler, for appellant.

William Williams, assistant attorney general, for appellee.

Argued orally by E. S. Candler, Jr., for appellant, and by William Williams, assistant attorney-general, for appellee.

OPINION

CALHOON, J.

Appellant was indicted for the murder of his own father, and convicted of manslaughter. He was sentenced to imprisonment for forty years, which is practically equivalent to conviction of murder with direction of the jury to imprison him for life. Whether the homicide was manslaughter or justifiable in self-defense is, in our view of the record, a close question on the testimony of the witnesses and on the physical facts. The jury determined it to be manslaughter, and their conclusion would not be disturbed without error of law. But the mere fact that the question of guilt is so close, and the penalty so grave, make it quite important that the trial should be free from serious error of law.

If general violence of demeanor and vindictiveness of disposition authorized conviction of felonious homicide, it appears from this record that the deceased in his lifetime was, and the accused and others of the family are, in continual jeopardy. David Mackmasters, brother of the defendant, was...