Taylor v. State

• Decision Date: 16 November 1914
• Citation: 108 Miss. 18,66 So. 321
• Court: Mississippi Supreme Court
• Parties: TAYLOR v. STATE

66 So. 321

108 Miss. 18

TAYLOR v. STATE

Supreme Court of Mississippi

November 16, 1914

October 1914

APPEAL from the circuit court of Madison county. HON. W. A. HENRY Judge.

Charlotte Taylor was convicted of infanticide and appeals.

Appellant was indicted for the murder of the newborn infant of her daughter, Minnie Taylor; and from a conviction and a sentence to the penitentiary for life she appeals.

The principal witnesses for the state were two physicians, Drs Howell and Rhyne.

Dr Howell testified that he was called to attend Minnie Taylor the daughter of the defendant, about seven-thirty o'clock in the evening; and upon entering the house he heard a noise, which he thought was the cry of a baby, but upon making inquiry of the defendant, he was informed that there was no baby in the house, and that the noise was probably made by a cat or dog. Upon examination of defendant's daughter he found positive evidences of her having given birth to a child, and asked defendant to produce the child; but the existence of the child was denied by the defendant. He made a search of the place, and finally discovered the dead body of the infant between the mattresses of the bed on which the defendant's daughter lay. He reported the matter to the sheriff, and Dr. Rhyne was then called in, and the two doctors and the sheriff visited defendant's house disinterred the body of the child and made a post-mortem examination. The child weighed nine pounds, and was fully developed, and apparently strong. Its lungs were removed, and, upon being placed in water, floated. According to the doctor's testimony this test showed that air had gotten into the lungs, and in his opinion indicated that the child had been born alive. There was no evidence of violence on the child's body to show its death by violence. Dr. Howell testified that its death was probably due to suffocation. There was no direct evidence connecting the defendant with the death of the infant. On appeal it is contended that the corpus delicti had not been sufficiently established to warrant a conviction: First, that it was not sufficiently shown that the child was born alive, and that the fact that the lungs floated in water was only one of many tests known to science for determining the fact that the child had been born alive; second, that it is not sufficiently shown that the child came to its death through a criminal agency, and there is no proof of violence; the doctor's testimony that the child probably came to its death by suffocation being based upon the fact that the examination showed no other cause of death, either from violence or natural causes. The testimony showed no motive on the part of the defendant for wishing to kill the child.

Reversed and remanded.

Powell & Thompson for appellant.

The corpus delicti in this case consist of two things, to wit: The birth of the child alive, and its death by criminal agency. The corpus delicti must be established by the state beyond all reasonable doubt. Pitts v. State, 43 Miss. 472.

We contend that, subject to this test, neither branch of the corpus delicti has been proven. It is true that two of the doctors testified that the lungs were subjected to the water test and the indications were that the child had breathed, but when we remember that this test is only one of many which might have been tried, and the further fact that this was the first test ever made by these doctors, this evidence does not leave the mind entirely free from every reasonable doubt in the matter.

Now as to the second branch of the corpus delicti, to wit: Death by criminal agency. It does seem that the state has only raised a suspicion of guilt. The evidence shows only that the child was once probably alive and was afterwards found dead, but there was no mark of violence on its person and no motive why defendant should wish to kill the child. If defendant wished to conceal the birth of the child, why send for Dr. Howell? Why not get the midwife next door, who had delivered defendant of fifteen children? If defendant knew of the birth of the child before Dr. Howell came, why should she send for him or why, when he came, should she say the child had not been born when she was bound to know that he would find out the truth on examination?

If it should be urged that Dr. Howell, when he came into the room, heard something like a child's voice, we say that even the doctor was not certain in regard to the noise, and further that if it was a child's voice, then defendant did not stifle it, because the doctor says she remained in the room with him for some half or three-quarters of an hour.

It seems to us from the meager testimony in the case as if the child was smothered by its mother, if it was really born alive. The court will notice from the evidence that the patient was lying with her head at the foot of the bed when the doctor arrived. It appears that the naval cord was torn and not cut, indicating that the child was snatched away; and the child was found, so far as I can determine from the evidence, under the pillow at the foot of the bed, and this place was not searched as testified to by the doctors. Now under this state of facts is it not highly probable that the mother in her frenzy reversed her position in the bed from head to foot, and tore the child from herself and rolled on it and thus smothered it? If the defendant delivered the child, why should she not cut instead of tear the child aloose, and surely, having had fifteen children of her own, she was not a novice at the business.

Nowland M. Reid, for appellant.

The facts, as disclosed by the record in this case, were utterly insufficient to support a verdict of guilty, and the peremptory instruction asked by appellant should have been granted. Indeed, there was no such proof of the corpus delicti as would have warranted the admission of evidence of a confession, or to have sustained a verdict of guilty, had there been such a confession.

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