Public-domain · open source
OpenJurist

76 Miss. 282

State v. Wiley

Mississippi Supreme Court

Decided November 15, 1898

Mississippi Supreme Court · decided 1898-11-15

From the circuit court of Union county. Hon. Z. M. Stephens, Judge.

Good law ✅— No negative treatment on recordhow we know

Decided 1898-11-15

How this case has been cited

Cited by 3 later decisions — most recently June 2000

1 federal appellate · 2 state decisions

10189819001910192019301940195019601970198019902000decided

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 →

Whitfield, J.,

¶1delivered the opinion of the court.

¶2The court erred in striking out the words set out as having been stricken from the instruction for the state. Says the court *283in Gaines v. State, 40 Am. Rep., 64, 65, through'the learned Judge Cooper: “It is not absolutely necessary that the name of the deity should be used ”—That is, to constitute profanity— “any words importing an imprecation of divine vengeance, or implying divine condemnation, so used as to constitute a public nuisance, would suffice.” Citing cases. See, to the same effect, 2 Bish. New Grim, Law, sec. 79 (1), and 2 Am. & Eng. Enc. Law (1st ed.), p. 424, the note where the authorities are collated. The very words here stricken out were held to constitute profanity in Holcomb v. Cornish, 8 Conn., 375.

¶3The court, therefore, erred in its holding as to what constituted profanity.

/76/miss/282 · .json · Public domain