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217 So. 2d 35

Kendall v. State

Mississippi Supreme Court

Decided December 16, 1968

Mississippi Supreme Court · decided 1968-12-16

Key passage — most relied on by later courts

“and to the exclusion of every other reasonable hypothesis.”

quoted by 1 later decision, including 427 So. 2d 701 - Erving v. State

Relies on Garber v. Wright Cast Stone, Co. · Hardy v. State · Warren v. State

Good law ✅— No negative treatment on recordhow we know

Decided 1968-12-16

How this case has been cited

Cited by 5 later decisions — most recently April 2011

5 state decisions

30196819701980199020002010decided

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 →

JONES, Justice:

¶1This cause comes from the Circuit Court of Yalobusha County where the appellants were convicted of grand larceny, it being alleged that they stole a Chevrolet pickup truck and a Ford Convertible.

¶2We do not think it necessary to discuss the assignments of error, but we are deeply concerned about the case as to the proof, and for that reason, avail ourselves of Mississippi Supreme Court Rule 6(b), and notice what we consider as a plain error not assigned.

¶3The distinguished Judge of the lower court in passing upon a motion for a peremptory instruction used this language:

THE COURT: The motion of the Defendants for a directed verdict will be overruled. The Court will have to say in so doing that the State’s evidence up to this point is quite thin. The evidence presented by the State is wholly circumstantial as to the taking of the vehicles in question. The Court is of the opinion, though, that the proof is sufficient to present the issue for the determination of the Jury.
The Court is of the opinion that there is a serious question as to whether the vehicles in question were taken, and also whether they were taken with intent to deprive the owner of his property permanently. The taking of property for it to constitute the crime of Grand Larceny must be done with intent to deprive the owner of the property of the use of his property permanently.

¶4We agree that the testimony is very thin as to the taking and asportation with the requisite felonious intent to deprive the owner permanently of said property.

¶5We also agree with the distinguished trial Judge that the case is entirely one of circumstantial evidence.

¶6Being such a case, the instructions for the State are defective in that they do not require proof of guilt “to the exclusion of every other reasonable hypothesis,” Hardy v. State, 177 Miss. 727, 172 So. 131 (1937); Warren v. State, 166 Miss. 284, 146 So. 449 (1933), and are not cured by other instructions.

¶7The case is therefore reversed and remanded for another trial.

¶8Reversed and remanded.

GILLESPIE, P. J., and PATTERSON, INZER, and ROBERTSON, JJ., concur.
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