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249 So. 2d 671

Benedetti v. State

Mississippi Supreme Court

Decided June 18, 1971

Mississippi Supreme Court · decided 1971-06-18

Relies on Simmons v. State · Brooks v. State · Brown v. State

Good law ✅— No negative treatment on recordhow we know

Decided 1971-06-18

How this case has been cited

Cited by 3 later decisions — most recently October 1993

3 state decisions

10197119801990decided

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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SMITH, Justice:

¶1Gerald Lee Benedetti was indicted for intentionally pointing and aiming a gun at another, discharging the gun so intentionally pointed and aimed, thereby injurying such other. The crime charged was that defined and proscribed by Mississippi Code 1942 Annotated section 2013 (1956). Ben-edetti’s trial in the Circuit Court of George County resulted in his conviction, and he was sentenced to serve a term of 8 years in the penitentiary.

¶2The evidence of guilt reflected by the record, including appellant’s own testimony, was ample to support the jury’s verdict of guilty.

¶3The action of the trial court in overruling objections to questions propounded to appellant, testifying as a witness in his own behalf, as to his prior criminal convictions, is assigned as error.

¶4Mississippi Code 1942 Annotated section 1693 (1956) provides as follows:

Any witness may be examined touching his interest in the cause or his conviction of any crime, and his answers may be contradicted, and his interest or his conviction of a crime established by other evidence; …

¶5In Simmons v. State, 241 Miss. 481, 492, 130 So.2d 860, 865 (1961), where the defendant testified as a witness in his own behalf, this Court said:

We have repeatedly held that the State can show that the defendant had been *672convicted of criminal offenses to discredit him as a witness, provided details of the same are not given. …

¶6See also Brooks v. State, 192 Miss. 121, 4 So.2d 886 (1941) and Brown v. State, 96 Miss. 534, 51 So. 273 (1910).

¶7The action of the trial court in overruling objections to questions propounded to appellant touching former convictions was not error.

¶8Other matters assigned for reversal are without merit and we find no prejudicial error in the record affecting the validity of appellant’s conviction. However, it is clear that he was indicted and tried under the provisions of Mississippi Code 1942 Annotated section 2013 (1956), under which the maximum penalty is 5 years confinement. The sentence of 8 years imposed upon appellant was improper. The conviction of appellant of a violation of Mississippi Code 1942 Annotated section 2013 (1956) is affirmed but the case will be remanded in order that the trial court may impose sentence under that section not to exceed the maximum of 5 years.

¶9The conviction is affirmed and the case is remanded for the single purpose of the imposition of a proper sentence.

¶10Affirmed as to the conviction, reversed as to the sentence imposed, and remanded for the purpose of resentencing.

ETHRIDGE, C. J., and PATTERSON, INZER and ROBERTSON, JJ., concur.
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