Finklea v. State

Decided March 15, 1909

Mississippi Supreme Court · decided 1909-03-15

From the circuit court of Noxubee county. Hon. Robert F. Cochran, Judge. Finklea, appellant, was indicted, tried for and convicted of burglary and appealed to the supreme court. On the trial in the court below the prosecuting lawyer called the wife of defendant to the stand as a witness for the state and, in the presence of the jury, caused defendant to object to her as being incompetent to testify. The wife was not permitted to testify.

Relies on Raines v. State · Thompson v. State

Good law ✅— No negative treatment on recordhow we know

Decided 1909-03-15

How this case has been cited

Cited by 8 later decisions — most recently November 1976

8 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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Whitpield, C. J.,

¶1delivered the opinion of the court.

¶2The testimony of the witness, Sennett, as to the conversation between him and the defendant about the defendant’s wife was ■clearly incompetent in any view. The only effect it could have was to have inflamed the jury against the defendant. We think, ■also, that it was very improper to have introduced the wife of the defendant as a witness against him. She was, of course, manifestly incompetent, and her introduction, under the circumstances of the case, may have had a damaging effect on the jury.

¶3We, however, do not reverse the case for this; but the first error is fatal, and for that reason the judgment is reversed, and the cause remanded. Raines v. State, 81 Miss. 489, 33 South. 19; Thompson v. State, 84 Miss. 758, 36 South. 389.

¶4Reversed.