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200 Miss. 142

26 So.2d 169

Martin v. State

Mississippi Supreme Court

Decided May 13, 1946

Mississippi Supreme Court · decided 1946-05-13

Key passage — most relied on by later courts

“); Lambert v. State, 199 Miss. 790 , 25 So.2d 477 (1946) (”

quoted by 1 later decision, including Carr v. State

Relies on Lambert v. State

Good law ✅— No negative treatment on recordhow we know

Decided 1946-05-13

How this case has been cited

Cited by 17 later decisions — most recently September 2006

15 state decisions

501946195019601970198019902000decided

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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¶1 Dissenting Opinion.

Sydney Smith, C. J.,

¶2 delivered a dissenting opinion.

¶3 The judgment of the court below should not be reversed, because the prosecuting attorney, in his argument, calls the attention of the jury to the fact that the evidence was undisputed “that Martin told the Chandlers that he and Shortridge and another (had bought the property in question for $4000' when in truth and in fact he had paid only $1200 for it” for two reasons: (1) It is manifest from the evidence that the appellant is guilty of the crime charged against him, and (2) this comment should not be held to refer to the appellant’s failure to testify in his own behalf. The prosecuting attorney had the right to call the jury’s attention to the fact that the evidence of none of the witnesses who testified in the case disclosed any dispute as to what Martin told the Chandlers — in fact, he could hardly have argued the case intelligently and effectively without so doing. This decision, together with that of Lambert v. State, 199 Miss. 790, 25 So. (2d) 477, makes it “almost impossible for a prosecuting attorney to safely argue a criminal case to the jury when the defendant therein fails to testify. ’ ’

Alexander, J., concurs in the foregoing dissent upon the first ground mentioned therein.
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