Rhone v. State
| Decision Date | 22 November 1971 |
| Docket Number | No. 46459,46459 |
| Citation | 254 So.2d 750 |
| Parties | Jim Paul RHONE v. STATE of Mississippi. |
| Court | Mississippi Supreme Court |
Roy Pitts, Meridian, for appellant.
A. F. Summer, Atty. Gen., by Karen Gilfoy, Special Asst. Atty. Gen., Jackson, for appellee.
Appellant Jim Paul Rhone was indicted, tried, and convicted in the Circuit Court of Lauderdale County for the crime of murder while engaged in the commission of the crime of armed robbery. He was snetenced to life imprisonment in the State Penitentiary, and from this conviction and sentence he appeals.
The evidence on behalf of the state established that on Saturday night, April 25, 1970, James William Gerland was found in his automobile lying on the seat with his head down on the running board on the right side of the car. His head was bloody and he had abrasions and cuts on his face. He was placed in an ambulance and carried to the hospital where he was pronounced dead.
A pathologist performed an autopsy on the following day. He described four major wounds and stated the cause of death of Garland was a gunshot wound that entered the body just to the left of the midline of the neck going through and completely cutting the spinal cord.
John Palmer testified that he first saw the car parked on the street and as it started forward a black man on the back seat shot one time. The car hit the curb and the man shot a second time. The car then ran into a building and the witness left to call the police.
Imogene Armstrong testified that she heard the shot and went to the place where the car stopped. She saw a white man in the front seat face down, about half of his body on the seat and half on the floor. She saw appellant on the back seat. When he got out of the car he asked what happened. He said that he had passed out and did not know what happened.
William Jones was in a restaurant and learned that there had been a car wreck. He and another man went to the scene and appellant came up beside him and handed him a pistol. He took the pistol and stayed a short time. He said he put the pistol in a handkerchief and then put it in a paper bag and hid it on the side of a ditch. The next day he carried an officer to the place where he had placed the pistol and turned it over to the officer.
The state also introduced a signed confession in which appellant admitted that he shot the deceased while attempting to rob him.
Appellant assigns many grounds for the reversal of this case, at least two of which are well taken and one is of such character as to require reversal. These will be discussed together with other alleged errors which may occur on another trial of this cause.
Appellant first urges that the trial court was in error in failing to sustain his motion to quash the indictment and to quash the jury panel because of systematic exclusion of numerous classes of people from serving on juries in Lauderdale County. Appellant offered proof on his motion and established by the evidence that the members of the Board of Supervisors each keep and maintain a card index list of people registered and qualified for jury service in their respective districts. The individual cards have the name, age, address, occupation and voting precinct thereon. When placing names in the jury box for use in trials in the county, if the name of a person exempt from jury service under provisions of Section 1764, Mississippi Code 1942 Annotated (1956) comes up on the list, such person is eliminated and his name is not placed in the jury box. The pertinent part of Section 1764 reads as follows:
All officers in the executive department of the state government, all judges and officers of the several state courts, all county and county district officers, all physicians, osteopaths and dentists actually in practice, all teachers and officers of public schools and locomotive engineers actually engaged in their vocation, all keepers of public mills and ferries who personally pursue those callings as their principal business, paying tellers of banks and cashiers who also perform the duties of paying tellers, all ministers of the gospel and Jewish rabbis actually engaged in their calling, all officers of the government of the United States, all lawyers practicing their profession, all telegraph operators, one apothecary to every store where drugs and medicines are the principal articles for sale, all members of fire departments in towns and cities having four or more paid members of such fire departments, shall be exempt from serving as jurors.
This section further provides that all other persons shall be liable for jury service unless excused for cause.
Appellant contends that the defendant in a criminal case has a right to an impartially selected jury and it is required that the jury be indiscriminately drawn from those eligible in the community for jury service untrammeled by an arbitrary and systematic exclusion. Appellant does not contend that the legislature cannot exempt a person listed for jury service, but does contend that the exemption is a personal privilege to the party exempted with which no one else has any concern. It is urged that exemption of these persons for jury service is not a disqualification, but a personal privilege which he may waive and the person exempted is not thereby disqualified for jury service.
We gather from appellant's argument it is his contention that the names of those persons exempt from jury service should be placed on the jury list and when they are called to jury service, they must serve unless they claim their exemption. Appellant argues that this custom not only violates the rights of those persons to have a right to serve on juries, but also amounts to a systematic exclusion and denied to appellant the right to have an impartially selected jury to which he was entitled under the Sixth Amendment of the Constitution of the United States.
This same proposition was urged in Capler v. State, 237 So.2d 448 (Miss.1970), wherein we held that the legislature had the power to prescribe the qualifications of jurors, and that it has the power to make reasonable classifications and that the exemptions set forth in this statute were not unreasonable and that the appellant's right to a fair trial was not prejudiced thereby. The most that can be said relative to the practice of the members of the Board of Supervisors in not putting the names of those persons specifically exempt from jury service on the jury list is that it is a mere irregularity. The jury laws of this state are directory and the selection of the jury in an irregular manner does not render it illegal. The obvious reason why the names of those exempt by law from jury service are not placed in the box to be drawn for jury service is that it would put the county to the expense of brining them into court for jury service and then have them claim the exemption. Appellant does not contend that he was deprived of a fair trial by the action on the part of the Board of Supervisors of Lauderdale County. We have held in a number of cases that the provisions of Section 1766, Mississippi Code 1942 Annotated (1956), are merely directory and not mandatory, and unless it is shown that the method used was fraudulent or such a radical departure from the method prescribed as to be unfair to the defendant or prevent due process of law this Court will not reverse. Armstrong v. State, 214 So.2d 589 (Miss.1968); Boyd v. State, 204 So.2d 165 (Miss.1967); Ladner v. State,...
To continue reading
Request your trial
-
Com. v. Tavares
...v. Ragsdale, 249 La. 420, 429, 187 So.2d 427 (1966), cert. denied, 385 U.S. 1029, 87 S.Ct. 758, 17 L.Ed.2d 676 (1967); Rhone v. State, 254 So.2d 750 (Miss.1971); People v. Huntley, 15 N.Y.2d 72, 255 N.Y.S.2d 838, 204 N.E.2d 179 (1965); State ex rel. Goodchild v. Burke, 27 Wis.2d 244, 133 N.......
-
Shell v. State, 03-DP-0087
...of the underlying felony of robbery was proper so long as the corpus delicti of murder was sufficiently established. Rhone v. State, 254 So.2d 750 (Miss.1970); Elliott v. State, 183 So.2d 805 (Miss.1966). It is this Court's opinion that the evidence presented was sufficient to convince a ra......
-
Jackson v. State, 57904
...at this point, of course, does not operate as a waiver to a subsequent objection when similar testimony is offered. See Rhone v. State, 254 So.2d 750, 753 (Miss.1971); Hawkins v. State, 193 Miss. 586, 593, 10 So.2d 678, 679 (1942).3 Even so, Rule 701 hardly works a radical departure in our ......
-
Cole v. State
...true and voluntary, and what weight and credibility should be accorded to it. Wilson v. State, 451 So.2d 724 (Miss.1984); Rhone v. State, 254 So.2d 750 (Miss.1971). Thus, once a confession has been admitted, "either party has a right to introduce before the jury the same evidence which was ......