Green v. State

Decided October 15, 1889

Mississippi Supreme Court · decided 1889-10-15

Trom the circuit court of Copiah county. Hon. J. B. Chrisman, Judge. The appellant has been, convicted of assault, with intent to commit rape. The prosecutrix testified that she was riding in the daytime alone and on horse-back along the public road, about two miles from the town of Hazlehurst, when reaching a place where the public road crosses the railroad, she noticed a negro man standing on the crossing.

Good law ✅— No negative treatment on recordhow we know

Decided 1889-10-15

How this case has been cited

Cited by 13 later decisions — most recently January 2009

12 state decisions

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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Cooper, J.,

¶1delivered the opinion of the court.

¶2The evidence is insufficient to support the verdict of the jury. We may conjecture the purpose of the defendant to have been to commit a rape, but, on the facts disclosed, it is conjecture only, and not an inference reasonably drawn from the evidence. The probabilities may be greater that a rape was intended rather than robbery or murder, but mere probability of guilt of a particular crime, and that, too, springing more from instinct than from proved facts, cannot support a verdict of guilty.

¶3There is great danger of improper convictions in cases of this character,, and, while the court should not for that reason invade the province of the jury, the danger admonishes us of the necessity' of standing firmly upon the right and duty of proper supervision and control of them.

¶4The judgment is reversed.