State v. Bacon

• Decision Date: 03 March 1900
• Citation: 77 Miss. 366,27 So. 563
• Court: Mississippi Supreme Court
• Parties: STATE OF MISSISSIPPI v. WILLIAM BACON

27 So. 563

77 Miss. 366

STATE OF MISSISSIPPI v. WILLIAM BACON

Supreme Court of Mississippi

March 3, 1900

December 1899

FROM the circuit court, second district, of Carroll county.

Judgment reversed, and motion to quash overruled, and cause remanded for trial on the indictment.

William Bacon, the appellee, was indicted for manslaughter. He moved to quash the indictment, basing the motion on two grounds (1) That the bailiff of the grand jury was improperly in the grand jury room during the deliberations upon the indictment and (2) that a person, who was not a member of the grand jury, not a witness in the case for any purpose, not subpoenaed before the grand jury, and had no knowledge of any of the facts or circumstances of the homicide, and not related in any manner whatever to the deceased, unlawfully and improperly intruded himself upon the grand jury while investigating and deliberating upon the homicide, and, in a malevolent and vindictive spirit, urged, in strong language the indictment of defendant, insisting that he was guilty of a diabolical murder, and that public sentiment demanded an indictment. At the trial on the motion to quash the indictment, several members of the grand jury were introduced as witnesses, and testified touching the conduct of the bailiff and intruder during their deliberations. The evidence shows that the bailiff was in the grand jury room part of the time, and out part of the time; that he was passing in and out; that the intruder applied for admission several times, and was finally admitted by order of the foreman, was sworn, and answered the routine of questions propounded to him; that he made some reference to, but knew nothing of his own knowledge about, the case. Several witnesses testified that the intruder stated, while in the grand jury room, that Bacon ought to be indicted. From a judgment sustaining the motion to quash the indictment, the state appeals.

Wiley N. Nash, attorney-general, for appellant.

The case of Hammond v. State, 74 Miss. 214, shows conclusively that this indictment should not have been quashed. It is asked that the judgment of the court below in this case be reversed, the motion to quash the indictment overruled, and the appellee held to answer the indictment.

McClurg & Flowers, for appellee.

A bailiff of the grand jury, technically speaking, is unknown to the constitution and the statutes of this state. A bailiff is not mentioned in the constitution, and only incidentally in the code.

Of all the officials known to the law, he is at the same time the most insignificant and most pestiferous. Without a single prescribed qualification, without bond, without prescribed duties, he at once takes charge of juries and proceeds to handle them like a captain does his company. The decision of this court and all the books bear abundant evidence of his restlessness, self-importance, intermeddling and expense to the county. Not a few worthy subjects have escaped the locks and bars of the penitentiary, and even the hangman's noose, at heavy cost to the community, because the bailiff took a hand in the case. Likewise, many have been broken up in their estates and destroyed in the estimation of the public by charges of crime of which they were innocent or excusable, because the bailiff, as in this case, let in the vicious to reap revenge. If he cannot be entirely suppressed, it may be possible, we hope, in some degree at least, to restrain him.

In Barnett v. Eaton, 62 Miss. 768, a civil suit, the judgment was reversed and the verdict set aside because the bailiff, a garrulous, gabby old man, diverted the attention of the jury from the consideration of the case "by noisy and repeated history of his own exploits in early life." It is announced by the court that "litigants are entitled to have their own controversies in the courts settled by that tribunal to which the law commits their decision, a jury of twelve sworn men, and not a sworn jury and a bailiff."

In the well considered case of Skates v. The State, 64 Miss. 644, this court holds "that it is not the possibility of being tampered with that vitiates the verdict of the jury; the verdict should stand unless there be enough shown to create wellfounded suspicion in the impartial judicial mind that unlawful influence have been exerted" upon the jury.

In Brown v. The State, 69 Miss. 398, a...