Parrett v. State

Decided March 14, 1949

Mississippi Supreme Court · decided 1949-03-14

Key passage — most relied on by later courts

“"The Court instructs the Jury for the Defendant that the Defendant is a competent witness in his own behalf, and that his testimony must be given the same weight, faith and credibility as any other witness that has testified in this case. The Court further instructs the jury that a reasonable doubt may arise from the testimony of the Defendant alone and that the jury has no right to disbelieve the Defendant because he is the Defendant."”

quoted by 2 later decisions, including 313 So. 2d 392 - McNamee v. State, 391 So. 2d 1010 - Baker v. State

Good law ✅— No negative treatment on recordhow we know

Decided 1949-03-14

How this case has been cited

Cited by 14 later decisions — most recently February 2014

14 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 →

Roberds, J.

¶1 Appellant was convicted of burglary and larceny, and sentenced to the penitentiary for five years.

¶2 *653 On this appeal he argues oxily oxie alleged error in the lower court, and that was the refusal of the court to grant to him the following instruction:

¶3 “The Court instructs the jury for the defendaxit that the defendant is a competent witness in his own behalf and you have no right to discard his testimony or to look upon his testimony with suspicion merely because he is; the defendant. If you have no reason to disbelieve him other than the fact that he is the defendant then you should believe his testimony to be the truth.”

¶4 This instruction was condemned by this Court in the cases of Coleman v. State, Miss., 22 So. (2d) 410, and Conn v. State, Miss., 1949, 38 So. (2d) 697.

¶5 Affirmed.