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91 Miss. 407

Anderson v. State

Mississippi Supreme Court

Decided October 15, 1907

Mississippi Supreme Court · decided 1907-10-15

Prom the circuit court of Jefferson county. Hon. Moyse H. Wilkinson, Judge. Anderson, appellant, and another were jointly indicted for the murder of Samuel Libowitz. A severance being granted, appellant was tried convicted, sentenced to suffer death and appealed to the supreme court. The appellant, a negro, was convicted on circumstantial evidence, and admissions made by him shortly after the homicide; he did not testify in the, case.

Cited by 1 later decisions — most recently February 1927

1 state decisions

Good law ✅— No negative treatment on recordhow we know

Decided 1907-10-15

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Whiteield, C. J.,

¶1delivered the opinion of the court.

¶2It was fatal error not to have excluded the testimony of Horace Payne and Henry King when the objection was first made. Objection was. duly made, and was overruled, when Horace Payne was under examination. This testimony put the entire details of a previous difficulty between the deceased and the defendant, some two or three months before the killing, before the jury. Without going particularly into these details, it is sufficient to say that they were such as manifestly to prejudice the defendant in the eyes of the jury very seriously — so seriously, indeed, that we cannot say, with any confidence, that the verdict of the jury might not have been different if this testimony had been excluded. It was of the most damaging character, and the error in not excluding it was not cured by subsequently sustaining the motion of the defendant to *410shut it out. We think the case falls on this proposition squarely within the principles announced in the case of Chism v. State, 70 Miss., 742; 12 South., 852. In a case almost wholly circumstantial, the error is all the more marked.

¶3Reversed and remanded.

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