Miskelley v. State, 55032
| Decision Date | 06 November 1985 |
| Docket Number | No. 55032,55032 |
| Parties | Mike MISKELLEY v. STATE of Mississippi. |
| Court | Mississippi Supreme Court |
W.O. Luckett, Jr., Luckett Law Firm, Clarksdale, for appellant.
Edwin Lloyd Pittman, Atty. Gen. by Billy L. Gore, Asst. Atty. Gen., Jackson, for appellee.
Before ROY NOBLE LEE, P.J., and ROBERTSON and PRATHER, JJ.
Mike Miskelley was indicted and tried in the Circuit Court of Benton County, Mississippi for the murder of Steve Brown. The jury found Miskelley guilty as charged and the lower court sentenced him to serve a term of life in the custody of the Mississippi Department of Corrections. Miskelley assigned twenty-eight (28) errors in the trial below, but briefed and argued only nine (9) of those assignments of error.
The principal actors in this case are Mike Miskelley, the appellant, age 15; Steve Brown, the victim, age 15; and Tammy Nance, age 16. Tammy Nance and Steve Brown began dating in 1979, when Tammy was in the ninth grade and Steve was in the eighth grade. About Christmas, 1980, they decided to date other young people, and terminated their steady relationship. After Christmas of 1980, appellant began seeing a lot of Tammy Nance and dated her regularly until about March 19, 1981, prior to the disappearance of Steve Brown on Monday, March 23, 1981. Tammy Nance and Steve Brown started dating again on Saturday, March 21, 1981, and on Sunday, March 22, 1981, Tammy met the appellant at church and informed him that she had a date with Steve Brown the next evening. They were supposed to go to Corinth on Monday, March 23, 1981.
Steve Brown went to school on Monday, March 23, and stayed after school for baseball practice. The last time he was seen alive by his family was around 3:30 that afternoon. The appellant called Steve Brown during the afternoon and asked him, if he wanted to go hunting. Steve agreed to go and appellant picked him up after ball practice on the steps of the high school around 4 or 4:15 p.m. He was sitting with Dwayne Hopkins and was carrying a .22-caliber Mossburg rifle, which his father had given him.
Appellant testified in his own defense. He said that when he got home from school on the afternoon of March 23, he called Steve Brown and inquired if Steve wanted to go hunting with him. Appellant picked Steve up at school in his car around 4 p.m. They went target shooting in the woods near Little Hope cemetery back of the Blackwell church and to a nearby lake and back to appellant's car. Appellant and Steve returned to Falkner, he dropped Steve off in front of the Bank of Falkner, and that was the last time he saw Steve Brown.
Appellant further testified that he picked up his paycheck at Griffin Brothers Grocery store where he worked part-time; that he remembered stashing some beer near the county line and got it, drank one can, and hid the remaining cans of beer in an abandoned pickup truck near his home so that his parents would not find out about his drinking beer; that he went home and the next time he heard anything about Steve Brown was when Steve's father came to his home around 7:30 or 8:00 that night, told him that Steve was missing, and inquired where they had been. Appellant joined in a search for Steve and about 11 p.m., the fire department, county officials and other people conducted a full-scale search. It continued for approximately two (2) weeks, but no sign of Steve was found.
Tim Hopper testified for the defendant/appellant that he had seen Steve Brown at school on the night of March 23, around 7:00, when he attended a Future Farmers of America meeting at the high school. However, his testimony was impeached by one Jerry Barkley, another student, who testified in rebuttal that Tim Hopper had told him he really didn't know, if it was Steve Brown he had seen that night.
After March 23, 1981, appellant and Tammy Nance resumed dating. According to appellant, she continually questioned him regarding Steve's disappearance and claimed to love Steve and wanted him found. Tammy Nance asked appellant over and over where Steve was and appellant always stated that he did not know. Finally, she said, "You killed him, didn't you?" Again, according to appellant, Tammy Nance asked him every day at school and called him at home about the whereabouts of Steve Brown, and said, "If you don't tell me where Steve is, I ain't gonna' love you no more." Finally, appellant said, "Yes, Tammy, sure, I did it, I killed him." Tammy Nance then would say to appellant that he had buried Steve and appellant said that he admitted it just to shut her up. During this period of time, Tammy Nance was providing sexual favors for appellant.
Pertinent parts of Tammy Nance's testimony taken from the abstract follow:
Steve and I began dating when I was in the 9th grade and he was in the 8th. On March 23, 1981, Steve and I had an agreement in effect by the terms of which we had decided to date other people. However, we had a date for that night. I had not dated anyone else. I had not dated Mike Miskelley. I went places with Mike Miskelley but I didn't call them dates. Mike Miskelley was a On the 23rd of March, 1981, Steve Brown and I had made plans to go to Corinth that night to get him a pair of tennis shoes. He had had a date the Friday night before his disappearance and on that Saturday, we got back together. On Sunday, March 22, 1981, I saw Mike Miskelley at church, Pleasant Hill Baptist Church. I told Mike that I was going to go with Steve the next night. Mike got up and left church. The following morning, March 23, 1981, I went to school, and I recall seeing Steve Brown at school that day....
... The first night, when Steve Brown disappeared, I questioned Mike Miskelley regarding Steve's disappearance. I asked whether or not he knew where Steve was. Mike responded that he did not, that if he knew where Steve was, he'd go find him. About the 1st of May, Mike Miskelley began to tell me that he had something to tell me, that he would tell me on his death bed. One night on the telephone he mentioned that he had something to tell me, and I told him that if he didn't tell me I would hate him and he said, "Okay, I will tell you." Then he told me that it was about Steve. That's all he said. The next morning in the auditorium at school, he said that he did this for me; that he thought Steve was coming between me and him, and that he done it for a four-letter word called love. He said he'd gotten mad the Sunday before Steve disappeared, he said that he dug a hole, and he said that the next morning he talked Steve into going hunting with him. He said he picked Steve up at school and headed down Highway 370. He said Steve didn't talk much, but that they talked about bulldogs and the band that was at school that day. He said that when they got to the woods, he didn't have his gun, but Steve had his. He said that they set up a bottle and shot at it with Steve's rifle. He said that they "went on up into the woods." He said he saw the hole that he had dug and he knew he had to do what he had come to do. He said he turned his head and pulled the trigger, and then he turned around. He said Steve took a step, and then another one, and then went down to his knees and just looked at him. He said Steve mumbled something, then fell. I started crying. Mike asked me not to cry. Then I settled down; I just wanted to know more. I wanted to know where, and I asked him how it looked, and he said "it didn't look bad." He said he loved Steve but he loved me more. He said it only took one; he said it hit Steve "behind the left ear." I asked him did he have blood in his blond hair? He said he buried Steve Brown, together with Steve's rifle. I asked him how he covered it up to keep it from being seen? Mike said he used "the shovel to cover it up." That's all he told me that day; he never told me where. Later on I asked him where, because I wanted Steve to be found. I loved Steve and I wanted him to be found. Mike said he couldn't tell me where.
Tammy Nance reported to her father appellant's admission, and Sheriff Crum and Highway Patrol Investigator Kenneth Dickson were made aware of it. She made a statement about the admission to them one week later on May 18, 1981. The investigators requested appellant to take a lie detector test using "the best examiner in the State of Mississippi," a highway patrol examiner in Jackson, Mississippi. Appellant, his father and mother, agreed that appellant should take the test and went to Jackson where appellant underwent the polygraph examination.
Nothing further developed in the investigation until December 27, 1982, (21 months since the disappearance of Steve Brown) when Danny Ross, who was hunting with his father and brother behind Blackwell church in Benton County, Mississippi, found a .22-caliber Mossburg rifle in a hollow tree in the middle of a small drain (branch). He retrieved the rifle and showed it to his father and brother, and the three returned to the location where they found human bones approximately two feet from the drain and a skull which was about six or seven feet away. Authorities were summoned, and the area was searched with the result that a human lower jawbone with braces on it was found. Steve Brown's dentist and orthodontist identified the jawbone as Steve Brown's through his dental records. The .22-caliber Mossburg rifle was identified as that belonging to Steve. The skull found lying on its side had a hole behind the left ear area with another hole in the front forehead area. These remains were approximately thirty (30) paces from a hole that apparently had been dug in the ground. 1
The Questions
Appellant contends that the State failed to prove that a crime had been committed, viz, the corpus delicti; that ...
To continue reading
Request your trial
-
Carr v. State, 90-DP-01106
...test. Goodson v. State, 566 So.2d 1142, 1153 (Miss.1990) (citing Garrett v. State, 549 So.2d 1325, 1330 (Miss.1989); Miskelley v. State, 480 So.2d 1104, 1108 (Miss.1985); Pennington v. State, 437 So.2d 37, 40 In Garrett v. State, 549 So.2d 1325 (Miss.1989), the rationale behind the rule for......
-
Edwards v. State, 97-DP-00566-SCT.
...crime has been confessed.'" Id. at 505 (quoting Brooks v. State, 178 Miss. 575, 173 So. 409 (1937)). See also Miskelley v. State, 480 So.2d 1104, 1107-08 (Miss.1985); Poole v. State, 246 Miss. 442, 150 So.2d 429 (1963). In these cases it is not the order of proof which is crucial but the ru......
-
Pinkney v. State
...cross-examination. This assignment is nowhere near the extreme limitation of cross-examination which we condemned in Miskelley v. State, 480 So.2d 1104 (Miss.1985), and was not The testimony of Officer Roosevelt Davis was that he had never seen Deputy Turcotte carry a gun. This was not repu......
-
Caston v. State
...is this so with respect to the principal prosecution witness. See Foster v. State, 508 So.2d 1111 (Miss.1987); Miskelley v. State, 480 So.2d 1104, 1108-12 (Miss.1985); Myers v. State, 296 So.2d 695, 700 (Miss.1974). Not only is this right secured by our rules of evidence, see Rule 611(b), M......