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95 Miss. 422

Nutt v. State

Mississippi Supreme Court

Decided March 15, 1909

Mississippi Supreme Court · decided 1909-03-15

From the chancery court of Adams county.. Hon. James Stowers Hicks, Chancellor. Nutt, appellant, was adjudged in contempt of the chancery court and the decree mentioned in the opinion was entered against him, from which he appealed to the supreme court. Since the appeal was dismissed no> other statement of the facts, in view of the opinion of the court, is deemed necessary.

Good law ✅— No negative treatment on recordhow we know

Decided 1909-03-15

How this case has been cited

Cited by 4 later decisions — most recently September 1964

4 state decisions

201909191019201930194019501960decided

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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Fletcher, J.,

¶1delivered the opinion of the court.

¶2The appeal in this case was prosecuted under section 39 of the Code of 1906. This section authorizes an appeal from the judgment of any court punishing a person for contempt. The decree rendered in the case under consideration, while it adjudged *423Nutt to be in contempt of court, does not impose any fine or other punishment for such contempt. The decree merely recites that appellant is in contempt, and provides that, unless he purges himself of this contempt by complying with a previous order of the court within a certain time fixed, the court would at some future date impose a fine or other form of punishment. It is manifest that this decree was not a final decree actually imposing punishment. We conclude, therefore, that no appeal lies from such an interlocutory order. Before a person can appeal under section 39, there must be a final judgment imposing punishment, and until this is done no appeal is proper.

¶3We, therefore, of our own motion, dismiss the appeal as being prematurely taken. It might be that the recusant party will have purged himself of contempt by complying with the order of the court, and that therefore no final judgment would be entered.

¶4Appeal dismissed.

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