Wiggins v. State, 39738
| Decision Date | 16 May 1955 |
| Docket Number | No. 39738,39738 |
| Citation | 224 Miss. 414,80 So.2d 17 |
| Parties | John E. WIGGINS v. STATE. |
| Court | Mississippi Supreme Court |
John D. Gautier, Pascagoula, for appellant.
J. P. Coleman, Atty. Gen., by Joe T. Patterson, Asst. Atty. Gen., for appellee.
At the May 1954 term of the Circuit Court of Jackson County appellant was indicted for murder. His case was continued at the May term and came on for trial during the second week of the November 1954 term at which time appellant filed a motion to quash the jury panel for the reason that the names of the jurors in the compartment of the jury box representing the fifth supervisor's district had been exhausted. The motion was overruled and a jury was selected from the first, second, third, and fourth supervisors' districts. No special venire was requested and the jury which tried this case was selected from the regular panel.
On the motion to quash it was shown by the circuit clerk that when the jury box was filled by the board of supervisors under the statute the names of all qualified electors from District No. 5, who were qualified for jury service, were placed in the box, but there were only a limited number of persons qualified for jury service in District No. 5 and because of the unusal number of special venires at the May 1954 term the compartment for District No. 5 was drawn down to the point that there were only seven names from that district for this November term, and all of these were drawn during the first week of that term.
We do not think that the lower court erred in overruling the motion to quash the jury panel, which is the first error assigned. Section 1798, Code of 1942, provides that the provisions of law in relation to the listing, drawing, summoning, and impaneling of juries are directory merely and are not mandatory. We held in Lott v. State, 204 Miss. 610, 37 So.2d 782, and in Kouvarakis v. Hawver, 208 Miss. 697, 45 So.2d 278, that a case will not be reversed unless there is a radical departure from the statutory scheme of summoning and impaneling juries.
Appellant contends secondly that he was entitled to a peremptory instruction and, as in so many cases coming to this Court, he contends that under the doctrine of Weathersby v. State, 165 Miss. 207, 147 So. 481, we must accept his version of the killing since there is no eyewitness. The rule in Weathersby and similar cases is that the defendant's version, if reasonable, must be accepted as true unless substantially contradicted in material particulars either by a credible witness or witnesses or by physical facts or by facts of common knowledge. In this case the appellant's version of the killing was that it was an accident. This was contradicted in many particulars, and to demonstrate this it is necessary that we review the evidence.
Appellant is 59 years of age. He formerly lived in Long Island, New York. Several months before the killing he brought his stepdaughter, Mrs. Ruth Mack, to Pascagoula, Mississippi. She was 36 years of age. They set up housekeeping and passed off in the community as husband and wife. A few week before the killing she left the appellant and moved across town and started living within a man by the name of Thomas. They were boarding in the home of a private family. Appellant was very much interested in getting Mrs. Mack to come back and live with him and he visited her several times at her boarding place. On the day in question Mrs. Mack went with appellant to his home and they spent most of the day together. Late in the afternoon he carried her back to her boarding place and left her. He then went to the home of another stepdaughter and obtained a .22-caliber, single shot, bolt action rifle and came back to Mrs. Mack's boarding place, which was the home of a Mrs. Green. Mrs. Green came to the door and according to her testimony he demanded to see Mrs. Mack and pointed the gun at Mrs. Green in a threatening manner and she told him to get out of the yard and shut the door on him. She testified that at that time he looked like a wild man. She notified Mrs. Mack that the appellant was outside and wanted to see her but also warned her that he had a gun with him. Mrs. Mack stated that she was not afraid of appellant or his gun and went out the front door and shut the door behind her. Mrs. Green and the man Thomas were sitting in the living room and they both heard two shots fired. One of these shots apparently went wild and...
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...of a person's handwriting, may state his opinion as to whether a particular writing was made by such person." Wiggins v. State, 224 Miss. 414, 80 So.2d 17, 19 (1955). In Wiggins, a criminal defendant was convicted of capital murder due, in part, to a handwritten letter in which he confessed......
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