Public-domain · open source
OpenJurist

194 Miss. 851

13 So.2d 829

McCulloch v. State

Mississippi Supreme Court

Decided June 7, 1943

Mississippi Supreme Court · decided 1943-06-07

Key passage — most relied on by later courts

“[t]he violation of a constitutional right can not be harmless error,”

quoted by 1 later decision, including 986 So. 2d 290 - Smith v. State

Relies on Calicoat v. State · Wexler v. State · Jones v. State

Good law ✅— No negative treatment on recordhow we know

Decided 1943-06-07

How this case has been cited

Cited by 12 later decisions — most recently June 2008

12 state decisions

501943195019601970198019902000decided

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 →

*855 Anderson, P. J.,

¶1 delivered the opinion of the court.

¶2 Appellant was indicted and convicted in the circuit court of Attala County of the crime of uttering a forged instrument and sentenced to the penitentiary for a term of ten years. From that judgment he prosecutes this appeal.

¶3 The evidence in this case not only showed the guilt of the appellant beyond a reasonable doubt and to the exclusion of every other reasonable hypothesis, but went further and was so overwhelming against the appellant that a verdict of not guilty would have indicated bias on the part of the jury in favor of the appellant. In such cases all errors are harmless unless they go to the extent of amounting to a denial of some constitutional right of the defendant. There is no such contention in this case. The fundamentals of a criminal prosecution were complied with. The errors complained of, if well founded, were harmless. The violation of a constitutional right can not be harmless error. Jones v. State, 97 Miss. 269, 52 So. 791. But other errors, if harmless, are not ground for reversal. Wexler v. State, 167 Miss. 464, 142 So. 501; Calicoat v. State, 131 Miss. 169, 95 So. 318; Flowers v. State, 101 Miss. 108, 57 So. 226.

¶4 Affirmed.

/194/miss/851 · .json · Public domain