Myrick v. State, 47686
| Decision Date | 11 February 1974 |
| Docket Number | No. 47686,47686 |
| Citation | 290 So.2d 259 |
| Parties | William D. MYRICK v. STATE of Mississippi. |
| Court | Mississippi Supreme Court |
William D. Adams, Collins, B. J. Landrum, Ellisville, for appellant.
A. F. Summer, Atty. Gen., by Ben H. Walley, Asst. Atty. Gen. and Pete Cajoleas, Special Asst. Atty. Gen., Jackson, for appellee.
The defendant, William D. Myrick, was indicted, tried and convicted in the Circuit Court of the Second Judicial District of Jones County for the murder of James Phillips, his son-in-law. The defendant pled insanity as a defense.
At the time of the homicide, defendant's daughter, Diane, and James Phillips had been married for approximately 3 years. Phillips was in the Army but was home on emergency leave due to the illness of his father. The young couple was visiting in the defendant's home while in Mississippi.
On the night of the homicide Phillips and his wife attended a party and returned to the defendant's home at a late hour. While they were preparing to retire the defendant came into their bedroom, sat on the bed and engaged them in a friendly conversation for about half an hour. During the course of that conversation the defendant produced some pieces of cheap costume jewelry which he maintained were valuable diamonds and rubies. Shortly thereafter the defendant left the bedroom, admonishing the young couple to get some sleep.
Diane, the only eyewitness to the killing, testified that some time later she was awakened because her husband was restless. She observed the defendant enter the bedroom whereupon she told him to return to bed and he replied, 'I am going to bed right now,' at which point he departed. Shortly thereafter the defendant was heard running through the house. Diane testified that a light was burning in the kitchen and in the dim glow thereof she saw the defendant, pistol in hand, standing at the foot of the bed. Both Diane and Phillips sat up in bed; Diane screamed, the gun discharged and Phillips fell back mortally wounded.
Immediately after the shooting the defendant ran into the kitchen, closely followed by his distraught daughter who slapped him lightly on the face and asked him if he knew who she was. After a brief interval, the defendant replid affirmatively to that query, and when asked if he knew what he had done, said Diane testified that the defendant ran back into his own bedroom cursing the decedent and screaming that Phillips should not have tried to beat Diane to death and that Phillips had been trying to shoot him (the defendant) with a gun. Diane also heard the defendant exclaim that he had killed Pee Wee before Pee Wee could kill him. The defendant apparently calmed down a bit, and when Diane told him that she was going to call her mother to obtain some assistance he replied,
Other evidence adduced during the trial revealed unconventional behavior on the part of the defendant. The defendant's younger daughter, Pam, testified that, early on the night of the shooting, the defendant had shown her some items of inexpensive costume jewelry and claimed that they were authentic jewels. After she retired the defendant requested her to get out of bed two times, first, to prepare his supper, and, later, to fill a bath tub with water for his bath. The defendant's elderly father testified that the defendant came to his home on the eve of the shooting and discussed the cutting of pulpwood from their jointly-owned land. The elder Myrick testified that the defendant did not seem to understand that they were being paid for the wood; he was calm but talking 'off balance'. It is not clear from the evidence when defendant visited his father because the defendant's wife testified that the defendant arrived home on the fateful evening and proceeded at once to his garden area and was in and about the home until she departed to her work. Apparently the defendant engaged in no unusual behavior up to the time Mrs. Myrick left for work at 10:30 p.m. Further, the ambulance driver who answered the emergency call to the Myrick home testified that he observed the defendant, but did not see any abnormal behavior.
The defendant testified in his own behalf and claimed that he did not remember shooting Phillips. The defendant stated that after he returned home from work and fed his hogs, he drank one can of beer and then went to sleep. The next thing he remembered after lying down was seeing Phillips standing at the foot of his bed, pointing an automatic shotgun at him and saying, 'I am going to kill you.' The defendant remembered removing his pistol from between the mattresses of his bed but did not remember anything else until he found himself in custody and on his way to jail. He testified that he had never been angry or had a fight with his son-in-law and that he thought Phillips was a good, Christian boy.
The defendant's principal assignments of error are: (1) the trial court refused to grant a mistrial after sustaining an objection to improper questioning by the prosecutor of a defense witness; (2) the state failed in its duty to establish the sanity of the accused beyond all reasonable doubt after the question of sanity had been raised so as to engender doubt; and (3) the court erred when it refused to grant Instruction No. 5 requested by him.
The first assignment of error is predicated on a question asked the defendant's father by the district attorney about past behavior of the defendant as follows: 'Was he acting queer or unusual when he took the rifle and shot at his own brother and you had to commit him to Whitfield back here some time ago?' The court sustained counsel's immediate objection and admonished the jury to disregard the question since it inferred the commission of another crime. The defense thereupon moved for a mistrial on the theory that the court's admonition was insufficient to remove the question's taint from the minds of the jurors, but the trial court overruled the motion.
The defendant vigorously argues that the prosecutor's question inferred a prior unprosecuted and unpunished crime by the defendant and as such was prejudicial to the defendant. The general rule which we follow holds that when an objection to a question is sustained and the jury admonished to disregard the questions there is no reversible error. See Herron v. State, 287 So.2d 759, No. 47,589 (Miss., decided Jan. 7, 1974) and the numerous cases cited therein. However, we have reversed some convictions because of prejudicial cross-examination by prosecutors. In Murphy v. State, 226 So.2d 755 (Miss.1969) we held that a question propounded to the defendant about a conviction of murder, when there had never been such a charge against him and no proof had been introduced, unduly and prejudicially influenced the jury against the defendant, especially in view of the fact that the evidence against the defendant was entirely circumstantial. See also ...
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