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111 Miss. 231

Barron v. State

Mississippi Supreme Court

Decided March 15, 1916

Mississippi Supreme Court · decided 1916-03-15

Hon. W. H. Hughes, Judge. Will Barron was convicted of arson and appeals. The facts are fully stated in the opinion of the court.

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Decided 1916-03-15

How this case has been cited

Cited by 10 later decisions — most recently August 1983

10 state decisions

4019161920193019401950196019701980decided

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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Potter, J.,

¶1delivered the opinion of the court.

¶2Will Barron, the appellant, was convicted of the crime ■of arson and sentenced to the penitentiary, from which judgment he appeals. The indictment charged that the defendant did unlawfully, etc., set fire to a certain barn, the property then and there of Nelson Payne.

¶3The. proof in this case is insufficient to establish the-corpus delicti. In establishing the corpus delicti of the crime of arson, it is not only necessary for the state to prove that the property of the prosecutor named in the *232indictment was burned, but to establish, also, that the fire originated through a criminal agency.

¶4The state has failed to establish in this case, beyond every reasonable doubt, as it is required to do by circumstances or otherwise, that the barn in question was burned through a criminal agency. The only testimony with reference to the burning of the barn is that it burned at a very early hour in the morning. There is no word of testimony of any sort to establish a criminal agency. In the trial of the case one witness testified, over the objection of appellant, that appellant had stated that his (appellant’s) brother “was guiltier than he was.” If this was intended for a confession, it was inadmissible, because the corpus delicti had not been proven.

¶5Reversed cmd remanded„

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