Williams v. State
| Decision Date | 15 April 1940 |
| Docket Number | 34051 |
| Citation | 188 Miss. 398,195 So. 334 |
| Court | Mississippi Supreme Court |
| Parties | WILLIAMS v. STATE |
APPEAL from the circuit court of Holmes county HON. S. F. DAVIS Judge.
Ellis Williams was convicted of murder, and he appeals. Affirmed.
Affirmed.
S. R King, of Durant, for appellant.
The court erred in overruling appellant's motion, at the close of the state's evidence, to exclude state's evidence and direct a verdict for the defendant. Testimony of all state's witnesses who claimed to be eye-witnesses to the commission of the alleged crime was so palpably false as to be impossible of belief.
The court laid down the rule that where evidence rests entirely on testimony impossible of belief, it will be insufficient to sustain a conviction.
Washington v. State, 148 So. 213.
Will this conviction be permitted to stand on the testimony of three witnesses who were at least (by their own testimony) 20 feet off from the fight, the occasion being a dark night and drizzling rain? Can a human being see a person's hands or arms for a distance of 20 feet or more on a dark rainy night at about midnight out on a country road? We contend that no human eye or eyes has that power, and further, that this court will take judicial knowledge that such is utterly impossible.
If the testimony of a witness is opposed to the laws of nature that lie within the court's judicial knowledge, it should be rejected as being false.
Washington v. State, 148 So. 213; Weltmer v. Bishop (Mo.), 71 S.W. 167, 65 L. R. A. 584; Wolf v. City Ry. Co. (Ore.), 85 P 620.
Evidence which is inherently unbelievable or incredible is in effect no evidence and is insufficient to sustain a verdict.
Teche Lines v. Bounds, 179 So. 747.
The evidence, neither at the close of the state's case nor at the close of the entire case made out a case of murder in the first degree. In this case, taking the state's proof in its best light it goes no further than to show a killing which took place on the spur of the moment, without any malice aforethought, and with no deadly weapon.
The court erred in refusing to grant appellant's requested peremptory instruction. The verdict is contrary to the overwhelming weight of the evidence and is contrary to law. The state failed to establish guilt beyond a reasonable doubt.
Truck Loading Co. v. Taylor, 164 So. 3.
W. D. Conn, Jr., Assistant Attorney-General, for appellee.
It occurs to the writer that under the peculiar circumstances of this record, it was peculiarly a case for the jury to determine the character of the killing. Appellant admitted having struck the deceased on the head with his club, and this was all that the state's eye-witnesses undertook to relate, so far as the manner of the killing was concerned. The witnesses were ignorant to begin with and were testifying to facts which had occurred nearly three years prior to that time, when even the memory of an intelligent, educated witness would have been dulled and it is not unusual to find that the eye-witnesses to this killing could not agree upon the details of it. They do agree, however, that appellant struck the blow immediately upon the deceased's denial that he had appellant's knife. Under all these circumstances, we think that the court properly ruled in the three instances where the sufficiency of the evidence was involved.
Appellant says that he was the only sure eye-witness to the killing; that his testimony is reasonable and consistent with all the circumstances, including the physical facts. If there were no conflict between his testimony and that of the witnesses for the state, his position would be correct under the circumstances put forward by him. However, his version of the killing is directly in conflict with that of the witnesses for the state, who claimed to be eye-witnesses, and, under such circumstances, we think it was a question for the jury rather than for the court.
We submit that the judgment should be affirmed.
The appellant, Ellis Williams, was indicted, tried and convicted on a charge of murder, at the October, 1939, term of the Circuit Court of Holmes county, and sentenced to life imprisonment in the state penitentiary; from which judgment an appeal was taken to this Court.
The appellant was charged with the killing of one Dock Branch, as they, in company with others, walked along a road in Holmes county in the night. It appears that the appellant passed several of the party--at least three--and on overtaking Dock Branch accosted him about a knife...
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