Wingo v. State
| Decision Date | 09 March 1908 |
| Docket Number | 13,035 |
| Citation | 91 Miss. 865,45 So. 862 |
| Court | Mississippi Supreme Court |
| Parties | LOUISA WINGO v. STATE OF MISSISSIPPI |
FROM the circuit court of, first district, Carroll county, HON JOSEPH T. DUNN, Judge.
Madame Wingo, appellant, was indicted and tried for and convicted of manslaughter, the killing of her husband, sentenced to the penitentiary for three years, and appealed to the supreme court.
The charge was that appellant killed her husband by hitting him on the head with an axe. No third person witnessed the killing. A son of the deceased, however, testified that at the time of the homicide he was in a room adjacent to that in which the killing took place, and, while putting on his clothes in the early morning, heard the axe strike his father, and later saw him dead, lying across the bed.
The appellant, testifying in her own defense, admitted the killing, but claimed that she acted in self-defense; that at the time she struck deceased with the axe he was standing at the front door of the room, attempting to shoot her; that deceased, when struck, fell across the bed. Her statements on the witness stand as to the details of the occurrence were contradicted in several material respects by the physical facts, and besides a witness for the state testified that the appellant, on the morning after the homicide, gave him a version of the affair, which he detailed and which was quite different from the one given by appellant in her testimony on the trial.
Affirmed.
Hughston & McEachern, for appellant.
There is no evidence in this case, aside from the testimony of the appellant herself, to show how the killing occurred. Her testimony, however, makes out a clear case of justifiable homicide. She acted in defense of her life, and struck the fatal blow only when her husband was pointing his gun at her and alleging, in a violent manner, that he would shoot her heart out if it was the last thing he ever did.
The testimony of her son, the sole witness for the state (with the exception of one other witness in rebuttal of appellant's testimony), does not make out a case of manslaughter. Although he testified that his mother killed the deceased, this is shown to be entirely a matter of conjecture on his part. He was not an eyewitness. The only way the jury could come to the conclusion that appellant killed the deceased was from her own testimony. And, as above stated, her testimony shows that she killed her...
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