Gordon v. State

Decided March 15, 1909

Mississippi Supreme Court · decided 1909-03-15

Drom the circuit court of Amite county. Hon. Moyse H. Wilkinson, Judge. Gordon, appellant, was indicted and tried for the murder of one Code Williams, was convicted of manslaughter and appealed to the supreme court. The testimony was conflicting.

Good law ✅— No negative treatment on recordhow we know

Decided 1909-03-15

How this case has been cited

Cited by 5 later decisions — most recently February 1961

5 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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Whitfield, C. J.,

¶1delivered the opinion of the court.

¶2The fifth instruction for the state- is fatally erroneous. It is a charge upon the weight of evidence. It selects and magnifies certain fragmentary ’ portions of the evidence. It attempts to put the facts constituting the theory of the- state, but fails to put them all, and it charges the jury that they may find the defendant guilty if they believe so and so- — doe's not state that they should believe beyond a reasonable- doubt, but that particular defect is cured by the instructions for the defendant. But, worse than this, it charges that they may find the defendant guilty if they simply believe so and so. They are not required to believe from the evidence. It is impossible to affirm this case, which is an exceedingly close one on its facts, in the face of an instruction so grossly erroneous.

¶3Reversed and remanded.