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75 Miss. 635

Johnson v. State

Mississippi Supreme Court

Decided March 15, 1898

Mississippi Supreme Court · decided 1898-03-15

Feom the circuit court of Noxubee county. Hon. G-. B. Huddleston, Judge. The appellant, Johnson, was indicted for the murder of one Jared Jordan. The instructions for the state, mentioned in the opinion of the court, are as follows: “1. If the jury believe, from the evidence, beyond all reasonable doubt, that the defendant, Beverly Johnson, shot and killed Jared Jordan with a pistol, and not in necessary self-defense, they should find the defendant guilty as charged. ’ ’ “2.

Good law ✅— No negative treatment on recordhow we know

Decided 1898-03-15

How this case has been cited

Cited by 6 later decisions — most recently March 1974

6 state decisions

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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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Whitfield, J.,

¶1delivered the opinion of the court.

¶2A more unsatisfactory case, on the testimony, was, perhaps, never presented to an appellate tribunal. There was not a charge given on either side as to manslaughter, and yet, on the proof, we think there might have been properly a verdict of manslaughter.- We do not mean to say that a verdict of murder would be improper, on the testimony, if there had been no error of law; but, since a verdict of manslaughter might also be upheld, it was, in the distressingly conflicting state of the evidence, to the last, degree important that no error of law should have been committed. The third instruction for the state shut the jury up to a verdict of murder or nothing, and was, on the record, reversible error. The first instruction was also, in the state of the record, error, but, as it is nowhere assigned for error, we only notice it to preclude its being given again.

¶3Judgment reversed, verdict set aside and cause remanded.

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