Speaks v. State

• Decision Date: 12 October 1931
• Docket Number: 29587
• Citation: 136 So. 921,161 Miss. 334
• Court: Mississippi Supreme Court
• Parties: SPEAKS v. STATE

136 So. 921

161 Miss. 334

SPEAKS v. STATE

No. 29587

Supreme Court of Mississippi

October 12, 1931

Division B

CRIMINAL LAW. Instruction that juror should retain own verdict irrespective of disagreement with all others held erroneously refused, evidence of guilt being in serious conflict.

Defendant requested instruction that each juror should make up his own verdict, governed by his own judgment and conscience alone after conferring with fellow jurors, and if any single juror was not, after conferring, satisfied to a moral certainty of the guilt of defendant, never to yield his own judgment, but to stand on it so long as not satisfied beyond a reasonable doubt of defendant's guilt, though every other juror disagreed with him.

HON. S F. DAVIS, Judge.

APPEAL from circuit court of Sunflower county, HON. S. F. DAVIS Judge.

Proceeding by the state against George W. Speaks. From an adverse judgment, defendant appeals. Reversed and remanded.

Reversed and remanded.

R. R. Norquist, of Yazoo City, and Frank E. Everett and Oscar B. Townsend, both of Indianola, for appellant.

In a matter of this sort, where the principal state's witness was also accused of the murder, and where he, by going before the grand jury, received an immunity bath, the court should be more liberal with its instructions, and should have granted instruction number 7, which tells the jury that after a conference with their fellow jurors that if a single juror on the panel is not satisfied with the evidence, to a moral certainty, of the guilt of the defendant, then it is his sworn duty to vote not guilty and not yield his judgment to that of any other juror, so long as he feels that the defendant should be acquitted, and in refusing that instruction we say the court committed error.

W. A. Shipman, Assistant Attorney-General, for the state.

Instruction number seven was properly refused. It would have told the jury that it is the duty of each and every juror to make up his own verdict, for himself, and to be governed by his own judgment and conscience alone. While the true rule is that he make up his verdict from the evidence and be governed by that alone.

Argued orally by Frank E. Everett and R. R. Norquist, for appellant, and by W. A. Shipmam, Assistant Attorney-General for the state.

OPINION

Griffith, J.

Three persons only were present when the homicide occurred, and thus there are left only two eyewitnesses. One of these, the prosecuting witness, testified that appellant committed the crime, while appellant is equally positive in his testimony that he is entirely innocent of it and that the killing was done by the said prosecuting witness. Much of the additional testimony tends strongly to corroborate the state's principal witness, while there are two features of the evidence,...