Taylor v. State

Decided October 15, 1914

Mississippi Supreme Court · decided 1914-10-15

■Appeal from the circuit court of Madison county. Hon. W. A. Henry, Judge. Charlotte Taylor was convicted of infanticide and appeals. Appellant was indicted for the murder of the newborn infant of he'r daughter, Minnie Taylor; and from a conviction and a sentence to the penitentiary for life she appeals. The principal witnesses for the state were two physicians, Drs. Howell and Rhyne.

Key passage — most relied on by later courts

“The examination of the body of the child by these physicians failed to disclose any evidence of violence to its person, and their opinion that it died from suffocation seems to be based upon the fact that their examination also failed to disclose any reason why the child should have died from a natural cause”

quoted by 1 later decision, including 211 Ill. 2d 192 - People v. Ehlert

Good law ✅— No negative treatment on recordhow we know

Decided 1914-10-15

How this case has been cited

Cited by 5 later decisions — most recently May 2004

5 state decisions

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.

¶2The evidence in this cause is wholly insufficient to support the. verdict. At most, <the testimony of the physicians who testified on behalf of the state discloses that *25the child was probably horn alive, and that in their opinion, if horn alive, it died from suffocation brought about in some unknown way. The examination of the body of the child by these physicians failed to disclose any evidence of violence to its person, and'their opinion that it died from suffocation seems to be based upon the fact that their examination also failed to .disclose any reason why the child should have died from a natural cause.

¶3Reversed and remanded.