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231 S.C. 655

99 S.E.2d 672

State v. MOUZON

Supreme Court of South Carolina

Decided August 27, 1957

Supreme Court of South Carolina · decided 1957-08-27

Relies on State v. Miller

Good law ✅— No negative treatment on recordhow we know

Decided 1957-08-27

How this case has been cited

Cited by 37 later decisions — most recently October 2017 · most notably State v. Dowling (2011), State v. Horne (1984)

36 state decisions

801957196019701980199020002010decided

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 →

Legge, Justice

¶1(concurring-in the result).

¶2I limit my concurrence to the result, because, although otherwise in full accord with the opinion, I am unable to agree that there-was no prejudicial error in that portion of *672the charge wherein (according to the transcript, by which we are bound) the jury was instructed that “before an alleged confession can be considered by the jury as evidence it must not have been induced by promises nor extorted by fear, but must be free and voluntary in every respect, and then it must be believed by the jury.” (Italics added.) The jury may well have understood, from the quoted language, that if they should find that the confession had been freely made they must accept all of the statements made therein as true. The language is certainly susceptible of such construction; so construed, it is an erroneous statement of the law, for even though the jury may accept the confession as having been freely made, they are the sole judges of its credibility, and may believe its statements in toto, or in part, or not at all. State v. Miller, 211 S. C. 306, 45 S. E. (2d) 23. But if the able trial judge did charge in the language quoted, it was the duty of counsel to call his attention to the error, which he undoubtedly would have corrected then and there. No timely objection or request for clarification having been made, appellant cannot now complain of it.

Taylor, J., concurs.
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