Patty v. State
| Decision Date | 06 June 1921 |
| Docket Number | 21809 |
| Citation | 126 Miss. 94,88 So. 498 |
| Court | Mississippi Supreme Court |
| Parties | PATTY v. STATE |
1 HOMICIDE. Effect of presumptions of innocence in murder trial stated; presumption of malice from use of deadly weapon will not support conviction of murder as against evidence of justification.
Where one is on trial for murder, he is presumed to be innocent until the contrary is made to appear; but if it be shown that he killed the deceased with a deadly weapon, the general presumption yields to the specific proof, and the law infers that the killing, if unexplained, is malicious, and therefore murder; but if the attendant circumstances and facts be shown in evidence, the character of the killing is determined by considering them. The lawfulness or unlawfulness of the killing are to be judged from the facts, and the presumption of malice from the use of a deadly weapon yields to the evidence, and will not support a conviction of murder against the facts showing justification. Hawthorne v. State, 58 Miss. 778.
2 HOMICIDE. Eyewitnesses should be introduced, if available, by the state.
Where eyewitnesses to a homicide can be obtained, they, or some of them, should be introduced by the state; and where the state fails to call eyewitnesses, and the defendant calls them, and they testify to the facts and circumstances of the difficulty or killing, and its cause or origin, and such facts are not contradicted by witnesses, or by circumstantial evidence of conclusive character, and where the evidence for the defense shows justification for the killing, a conviction cannot be upheld on mere presumptions of law arising from the use of a deadly weapon.
APPEAL from circuit court of Winston County, HON. T. L. LAMB, Judge.
Will Patty was convicted of murder, and he appeals. Reversed, and defendant discharged.
Judgment reversed.
L. H. Hopkins, for appellant.
The day has fully come when it is the next thing to an impossibility to get an acquittal of a negro charged with murder before the juries of Winston County. It may be improper to make such a statement, but I am so much impressed with the thoughtfulness of it that I make it without any fear whatever of successful contradiction.
I will rest this case on the case of Houston v. State, 117 Miss. 311, and adopt the learned opinion in that case as my argument here.
Wm. Hemmingway, assistant attorney general, for the state.
The court will note that there was no real danger to the appellant shown by the testimony. From the weapon found on the deceased the defendant does not seem to have been in any danger of any injury sufficient to plead self-defense to the extent of killing the deceased. There was no perilous situation nor reasonable apprehension of danger.
The statement of facts makes an argument useless.
It is simply for the court to decide whether under the testimony this verdict should be allowed to stand. This being a court to review errors, it is respectfully submitted that no reversible error was committed.
Will Patty was indicted and convicted of murder of one Munich Moore, and sentenced to life imprisonment, and appeals.
It is assigned for error that the court erred in refusing a peremptory instruction for the appellant. The killing occurred in the town of Louisville on a Sunday night. There were three persons present, the defendant, Myrt Hopkins, and the wife of the deceased, neither of whom was introduced on behalf of the state.
The testimony for the state shows that the shot was heard by one negro witness, who had attended church with the defendant and the deceased, and by a white man near whose residence the killing occurred, who testified to hearing the shot, but heard no quarreling or disputing. On the following morning early this negro witness, passing down the street, discovered the body of the deceased, and went to Mr. Jones' house, a white man near whose residence the shooting occurred, and they went out and inspected the body, and found the deceased lying on his face with a small knife under him open. An investigation was made and the appellant arrested. When first arrested by the sheriff, he denied the killing but shortly thereafter admitted the shooting and told the circumstances under which the killing took place disclosing that the wife of the deceased and Myrt Hopkins, a negro woman, were present when the difficulty arose. On proof by the state of the killing with a deadly weapon, and the admission of the defendant to the sheriff that he did the killing,...
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