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106 Miss. 103

Bennett v. State

Mississippi Supreme Court

Decided October 15, 1913

Mississippi Supreme Court · decided 1913-10-15

IloN. W. A. HeNby, Judge. James Gr. Bennett having been convicted of bigamy, filed a writ of error coram nobis, and from an order denying the writ, appeals. The facts are fully stated in the opinion of the court.

Relies on Sanders v. State · Fugate v. State

Good law ✅— No negative treatment on recordhow we know

Decided 1913-10-15

How this case has been cited

Cited by 12 later decisions — most recently March 1986

12 state decisions

4019131920193019401950196019701980decided

Later decisions citing this case, by decade. The current decade is in progress, and our corpus holds fewer opinions from the most recent years, so the latest bars are undercounted — not a real decline.

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Smith, C. J.,

¶1delivered the opinion of the court.

¶2Appellant was convicted some time since of the crime of bigamy, appealed to this court, and the judgment was affirmed. Afterwards he filed a petition with the circuit judge in vacation for a writ of error cor am nobis, the prayer of which petition was ,by the circuit judge denied after hearing on full evidence.. The power of the judge to hear and determine this matter in vacation was not challenged.

¶3The.ground of the petition is.the alleged existence of certain facts not made known to the court at the time of the trial, and which, had they been known, would have caused a different verdict and judgment to have been rendered, to wit: First, that-he had'been legally divorced from his first wife before his marriage to the second; *108second, that his second marriage was void, for the reason that it was contracted by him under duress. Neither of these defenses can be made the ground of the writ of error coram nobis, for the reason that they existed at the time of the trial. Fugate v. State, 85 Miss. 94, 37 So. 554, 107 Am. St. Rep. 268, 3 Ann. Cas. 326; Sanders v. State, 85 Ind. 329, 44 Am. Rep. 29; 5 Enc. P. & P. 29.

¶4Appellant alleges that he was deterred from introducing evidence relative to his having contracted the second marriage nnder duress by fear of personal violence to himself, should he do so. This, allegation, conceding but not deciding, that such a fact would constitute a ground for the issuance of the writ prayed for, is not sustained by the evidence.

¶5Affirmed.

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