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107 Miss. 559

Ferguson v. State

Mississippi Supreme Court

Decided March 15, 1914

Mississippi Supreme Court · decided 1914-03-15

Hon. N. A. Taylor, Judge. Walter Ferguson was convicted of manslaughter and appeals. The facts are fully stated in the opinion of the court.. The first and most important question, to the defendant, to be discussed in this case, is whether or not, hé-has had a constitutional trial by a legally constituted jury. If he has not, this court will not hesitate to grant him that right.

Key passage — most relied on by later courts

“‘ [Since there is no evidence that appellant was not tried by a fair and impartial jury, error cannot be predicated of an irregularity in the drawing or impaneling thereof, since the statutes on the subject are declared, by section 2718, Code of 3906, to be directory merely” — citing authorities.”

quoted by 3 later decisions, including Lott v. State, Haney v. State

Relies on Buchanan v. State

Good law ✅— No negative treatment on recordhow we know

Decided 1914-03-15

How this case has been cited

Cited by 18 later decisions — most recently January 1978

18 state decisions

801914192019301940195019601970decided

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.

View the full empirical analysis of this case →

Smith, C. J.,

¶1delivered the opinion of the court.

¶2Appellant was indicted for murder and convicted of manslaughter.

¶3The county of Yalobusha is' divided into two circuit court districts. When the case came on for trial, the district attorney requested the court to order a special venire from the county at large, fifty names to be drawn from the jury box of the second district and fifty competent jurors to he summoned from the first district. This was objected to by the defendant “for the reason that there is no law authorizing any such proceeding.” The jury box for the first district had been practically exhausted ; there remaining therein the names of only three persons. The court sustained this motion, and fifty names were drawn from the jury box of the second dis*564trict and the sheriff directed to summon fifty competent jurors from the body of the first district. Section 2692 of the Code of 1906 provides:

“In such counties (referring to counties in which there are two circuit court districts) a juror shall not be required to serve out of his district, except the court in. its discretion should otherwise direct, and except when, drawn on a special venire; and in either of such excepted cases the jury shall be drawn from the two jury-boxes, if the court so direct, one name from each alternately. ”

¶4This section clearly authorized the summoning of a special venire from both districts of a county containing more than one district, and, on account of the fact that the jury boxes from one of the districts had been exhausted, the court below committed no error in not directing that one name be drawn from each district alternately; it being impossible for this to be done. Moreover, since there is no evidence that appellant was not tried by a fair and impartial jury, error cannot be predicated of an irregularity in the drawing or impaneling-thereof, since the statutes on the subject are declared, by section 2718 of the Code of 1906, to be directory merely.. Buchanan v. State, 84 Miss. 332, 36 So. 388.

¶5The court committed no error with reference to the-other matters complained of.

¶6Affirmed..

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