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456 So. 2d 757

Docket No. 55059.

Green v. State

Lee Edward GREEN v. STATE of Mississippi.

Mississippi Supreme Court

Decided September 19, 1984.

Mississippi Supreme Court · decided 1984-09-19

Key passage — most relied on by later courts

“the granting of a cautionary instruction regarding the testimony of an accomplice is discretionary with the trial judge.”

quoted by 5 later decisions, including Williams v. State, 473 So. 2d 478 - Hussey v. State

Relies on 394 So. 2d 869 - Catchings v. State · 319 So. 2d 223 - Fleming v. State · 219 So. 2d 916 - Robinson v. State

Good law ✅— No negative treatment on recordhow we know

Decided 1984-09-19

How this case has been cited

Cited by 14 later decisions — most recently August 2016

14 state decisions

701984199020002010decided

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 →

¶1Kenneth C. O'Neal, Grenada, for appellant.

¶2*758 Bill Allain, Atty. Gen. by Anita Mathews Stamps, Sp. Asst. Atty. Gen., Jackson, for appellee.

¶3Before WALKER, P.J., and HAWKINS and DAN M. LEE, JJ.

¶4WALKER, Presiding Justice, for the Court:

¶5This is an appeal from the Circuit Court of Grenada County, Mississippi wherein the appellant, Lee Edward Green, was indicted, tried and convicted of attempted armed robbery and sentenced as an habitual offender to a term of fifteen years in the custody of the Mississippi Department of Corrections. Aggrieved with the lower court's holding, appellant has perfected his appeal to this Court.

¶6The appellant contends the court erred in failing to grant Instruction D-8 which reads:

Lonzell Williams, Jr. is an accomplice in this case and the testimony of an accomplice is to be considered and weighed with great care and caution. You may give it such weight and credit as you deem it is entitled.

¶7Assuming Williams was an accomplice to the crime as contended by the defendant, this Court has held on numerous occasions that the trial court has broad discretion in deciding whether to grant a cautionary instruction regarding the testimony of an accomplice; and, the refusal to give such an instruction does not constitute reversal error. Fleming v. State, 319 So.2d 223 (Miss. 1975); Wilson v. State, 305 So.2d 347 (Miss. 1974); Robinson v. State, 219 So.2d 916 (Miss. 1969). However, that discretion is subject to abuse when the State's evidence rests solely upon the testimony of an accomplice and there is some question as to the reasonableness and consistency of the testimony, or the defendant's guilt is not clearly proven as was the case in Catchings v. State, 394 So.2d 869 (Miss. 1981). In that case we held that refusal of the requested instruction was prejudicial error and reversed the conviction.

¶8In this case, the evidence of the defendant's guilt was proven not only by the testimony of the accomplice, but the eyewitness testimony of the victim. Therefore, the trial court did not abuse its discretion by refusing the cautionary instruction.

¶9In considering the evidence before us which is favorable to the State together with all reasonable inferences to be drawn therefrom, we find the evidence more than sufficient to support the verdict of guilty.

¶10Finding no errors committed in the lower court, this cause is hereby affirmed.

¶11AFFIRMED.

¶12ROY NOBLE LEE, P.J., and BOWLING, HAWKINS, DAN M. LEE, PRATHER, ROBERTSON and SULLIVAN, JJ., concur.

¶13PATTERSON, C.J., not participating.

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