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121 Miss. 436

House v. State

Mississippi Supreme Court

Decided October 15, 1919

Mississippi Supreme Court · decided 1919-10-15

Hon. A. E. Weathersby, Judge. Diamond House ivas convicted of murder and appeals. The facts are fully stated in the opinion of the court.

Relies on Wells v. State

Good law ✅— No negative treatment on recordhow we know

Decided 1919-10-15

How this case has been cited

Cited by 10 later decisions — most recently April 1988

10 state decisions

3019191920193019401950196019701980decided

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.

¶2*437This is an appeal from a conviction for murder, followed by a death sentence.

¶3There is no merit in any of the assignments of error, only one of which will he here specifically noticed.

¶4The appellant introduced no evidence, and it appears from a special bill of exceptions that a privately employed counsel, who was assisting the district attorney •in the prosecution, used the following language in his argument to the jury:

“There are no eyewitnesses in this case, but Diamond House is responsible for that. There are two people living now who know how this happened. One of them came and told you.”

¶5Assuming for the sake of the argument that counsel for the appellant are correct in their contention that this language is a comment on the appellant’s failure to testify, and violates section 1918, Code of 1906 (sec. tion 1578, Hemingway’s Code), nevertheless we cannot reverse therefor for the reason that the appellant could not have been prejudiced thereby. His guilt is manifest from the evidence, and the jury could not, under their oaths, have arrived at any verdict other than one of guilty. Wells v. State, 96 Miss. 500, 51 So. 209.

¶6Affirmed, and Friday, the 26th day of March, 1920, fixed as the day for the execution of the sentence.

¶7Affirmed.

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