Williams v. State

• Decision Date: 20 January 1902
• Citation: 31 So. 197,79 Miss. 555
• Court: Mississippi Supreme Court
• Parties: URIAH S. WILLIAMS v. STATE OF MISSISSIPPI

31 So. 197

79 Miss. 555

URIAH S. WILLIAMS v. STATE OF MISSISSIPPI

Supreme Court of Mississippi

January 20, 1902

October 1901

FROM the circuit court of Webster county. HON. WILLIAM F. STEVENS Judge.

Williams appellant, was indicted for arson, the burning of a storehouse, the property of one Stevenson, in which house appellant was at the time doing a mercantile business. The evidence in the case was wholly circumstantial. Smith and Dixon, witnesses for the state, testified that the defendant some two or three weeks before the burning of the storehouse, was in the town of West Point, and while there sought to employ them to set the storehouse on fire; that they had told the fact at the time to certain men whose names the witnesses gave. The parties so named were called as state witnesses and testified, over the objection of defendant, to what the witnesses, Smith and Dixon, told them. The trial resulted in the conviction of the defendant, and he was sentenced to the penitentiary for the term of three years. From this judgment of the court defendant appealed to the supreme court. The opinion contains a further statement of the facts.

Reversed and remanded.

Roane & Lamb and R. P. & C. B. Williams, for appellant.

It was not competent to prove by other witnesses that the principal state's witness had made statements to them before the trial detailing the alleged facts to which he had testified. A party cannot corroborate his witness by showing that he had previously narrated the matter to which he testified. Surely if a witness needs corroboration to convince that he has sworn the truth, he must be aided by something more than his own unsworn statements. You can impeach a witness by showing that he had previously made a contradictory statement, but you cannot corroborate him by showing like statements.

It was error, certainly, to allow state's witness Kelly to detail his suspicions of Williams' intent to burn the house. Appellant's objection to this testimony was duly made and should have been sustained. If witness Kelly knew any facts, he should have been confined to a statement of them.

Monroe McClurg, attorney-general, for appellee.

The case was one of circumstantial evidence, but the circumstances so unerringly point to appellant's guilt that this court ought not reverse the conviction. If the court below committed errors in the admission of evidence, they are not reversible ones. The fullest latitude was due the state in a case like this.

Argued orally by S. M. Roane, for appellant, and by Monroe McClurg, attorney-general, for appellee.

OPINION

TERRAL, J.

The conviction of the defendant is sought to be supported, if it may be so supported, by evidence of the burning of the storehouse occupied by the defendant by such apparent means--the profuse use of oil--as being a way which George Smith testified the defendant proposed to him to burn said building. And to give cogency to this presumption that the defendant caused the house to be burned, because the means that he proposed Smith should use in its burning were apparently used by the incendiary, or to fortify the testimony of Smith upon which the alleged presumption rested certain hearsay evidence, in repeated instances and by divers persons, was offered by the state's counsel, and admitted by the court over the objection of the defendant. As an illustration of the character of the evidence thus admitted to the jury, George Smith, who swore that the defendant offered to hire him to burn the storehouse,...