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366 So. 2d 668

Ballard v. State

Mississippi Supreme Court

Decided January 24, 1979

Mississippi Supreme Court · decided 1979-01-24

Key passage — most relied on by later courts

“In all criminal prosecutions the accused shall have a right to be heard by himself or counsel, or both, ...”

quoted by 1 later decision, including 811 So. 2d 346 - Davis v. State

Relies on 351 So. 2d 1342 - Gray v. State

Good law ✅— No negative treatment on recordhow we know

Decided 1979-01-24

How this case has been cited

Cited by 13 later decisions — most recently April 2011

1 federal appellate · 9 state decisions

6019791980199020002010decided

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 →

SUGG, Justice, for the Court:

¶1George Ballard was indicted in Clay County for murder, convicted of manslaughter and sentenced to fifteen (15) years imprisonment. On appeal he assigns three errors but it is necessary that we note only one assignment of error because it requires the reversal of this case, and there is no merit to the other two assignments of error.

¶2Ballard argues that the court erred when it refused to allow him to personally make a portion of the closing argument to the jury. Article 3, Section 26, Mississippi Constitution of 1890 provides in part as follows:

In all criminal prosecutions the accused shall have a right to be heard by himself or counsel, or both, .

¶3We held in Gray v. State, 351 So.2d 1342 (Miss.1977) that a defendant is entitled to personally argue his case to the jury and refusal to allow him to do so is reversible error.

¶4REVERSED AND REMANDED.

PATTERSON, C. J., SMITH and ROBERTSON, P. JJ., and WALKER, BROOM, LEE, BOWLING and COFER, JJ., concur.
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