Williams v. State
| Decision Date | 06 June 1932 |
| Docket Number | 30159 |
| Citation | 142 So. 471,163 Miss. 475 |
| Court | Mississippi Supreme Court |
| Parties | WILLIAMS v. STATE |
(En Banc.)
1 HOMICIDE.
Evidence held sufficient to warrant conviction of murder.
2 HOMICIDE.
Whether penalty of death or life imprisonment should be inflicted on conviction of murder was for jury.
3 HOMICIDE.
Malice may be suddenly formed, and no particular period of deliberation is required to make killing deliberate and malicious.
4 HOMICIDE.
Evidence held sufficient to warrant finding that defendant killed deceased deliberately and with malice aforethought, so as to warrant imposition of death penalty.
5. CRIMINAL LAW.
Instruction that, if two reasonable theories, one of which is favorable to state and other to defendant, arise out of evidence, jury must accept latter, though former is more reasonable and supported by stronger evidence, held inapplicable in case depending on eyewitnesses' testimony.
6. CRIMINAL LAW.
Court need not give instructions, though correct in principle, when case is covered by instructions already given.
APPEAL from circuit court of Issaquena county, HON. E. L. BRIEN, Judge.
Jake Williams was convicted of murder, and he appeals. Affirmed.
Affirmed.
Lamar Watson, of Greenville, for appellant.
The court erred in refusing instruction asked for by appellant which reads as follows:
The court further instructs the jury that the defendant is presumed to be innocent of the crime charged in the indictment, and that presumption entered into the trial of this case in its very conception, and follows him throughout the trial and until a final termination of the case, and clothes him as with a coat of mail against conviction, until the state has swept that presumption away, not by presumptions, not by conclusions, not by innuendos, but by evidence so strong and convincing as to remove from your minds every reasonable doubt in your minds arising from the evidence in this case; and unless you believe that the state has proven each and every allegation alleged in the indictment to your satisfaction and to a moral certainty, then it is your sworn duty to find the defendant not guilty.
Gentry v. State, 108 Miss. 505, 56 So. 982; Wilkie v. Collins, 48 Miss. 496; Owens v. State, 80 Miss. 499; Cook v. State, 85 Miss. 738; Blalack v. State, 79 Miss. 517; Jones, Blue Book on Evidence, Sec. 12 B.
The evidence in this case does not warrant the extreme penalty inflicted upon appellant. The facts in this case are of such a nature as to warrant a jury to either believe the state's evidence, or to believe appellant's evidence and in that instance, there is bound to arise a reasonable doubt as to the guilt or innocence of appellant, and that being true, this case falls clearly under the Byrd case, 154 Miss. 742, and is a case to be reviewed by this court.
The state must prove its case to moral, certainty; accused need only raise a reasonable doubt of guilty to entitle him to acquittal.
Cumberland v. State, 110 Miss. 521.
T. J. Lawrence, of Rolling Fork, and Lamar Watson, of Greenville, for appellant.
The evidence in this case does not warrant the extreme penalty inflicted by the court.
After reading the record in this case closely and duly considering all of the testimony offered by the state and appellant we are of the opinion that it is not sufficient to warrant the extreme penalty inflicted by the court, that is to hang the sixty-seven year old man for the crime alleged that he committed. We are constrained to believe that the Honorable Supreme Court of this state will not permit this conviction to stand which inflicts upon the appellant the extreme penalty provided by law.
The jury list was not certified to according to law.
Section 2039 of Miss. Code of 1930; section 2040, Miss. Code of 1930.
W. D. Conn, Jr., Assistant Attorney-General, for the state.
The evidence of the state, when considered in the light of the physical facts, clearly makes out a case of murder and that it is not such a case as should be reversed because the facts are not sufficient to justify the verdict of the jury.
The instruction on the presumption of innocence was considered by this court in the case of Blalack v. State, 79 Miss. 517, 31 So. 105. That instruction held that the burden was on the state to prove beyond a reasonable doubt every material allegation necessary to establish his guilt. The instruction in the case at bar does not require every material allegation necessary to establish its guilt in it, but goes further than that and says it must prove each and every allegation of the indictment to a moral certainty and if the state has not done so, then the jury must acquit. This instruction is not in the proper form and therefore it was proper to refuse it.
Argued orally by T. J. Lawrence, for appellant, and by W. D. Conn, Assistant Attorney-General, for the state.
Jake Williams, the appellant, was convicted in the circuit court of Issaquena county on a charge of murder; found guilty, and the death sentence was imposed.
Williams killed a man named Johnson, a tenant on his place, near sundown on November 9, 1931.
According to the state's witnesses, the appellant came to the home of the deceased at a time when deceased was near a barn tying a cow. The appellant was riding a mule, having in his hands a Winchester rifle. The deceased asked appellant what he was going to do with the gun, and the appellant replied, "It is my land and my gun; the best thing for you to do is to move on." Nothing further passed at that time, but at the time of the killing the appellant went to the house of the deceased and asked for him and was told that the deceased was driving towards the house then in a truck. The appellant thereupon, went in the direction from which the deceased was approaching, and, according to the state's witnesses, stated that his rent was due, and that he wanted it. The deceased replied that he had not made anything much, and what he had made would have to be paid to the federal government for its aid. That the appellant then went to the place where his gun was, took the gun, and fired at the deceased, hitting him in the breast. The state's witnesses, the wife and daughter of the deceased, who were eyewitnesses, stated that the deceased had started to drive on, and was in the truck at the steering wheel, and had turned to look at the appellant when the shot was fired, and that the deceased then fell out of the truck, which, being in gear, went on some several feet distant from the body. The bullet entered the breast about...
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