Public-domain · open source
OpenJurist

97 Miss. 658

Anderson v. State

Mississippi Supreme Court

Decided October 15, 1910

Mississippi Supreme Court · decided 1910-10-15

Trom: the circuit court of Clarke county. Hon. John L. Buoicley, Judge. Anderson, appellant, was indicted and tried for the murder of Staten Calvert, was convicted of manslaughter, and appealed to the supreme court. The opinion of the court sufficiently states the facts. This is a close case on the facts. A strong showing of self-defense was made by appellant. Had the appellant’s eleventh instruction been granted by the trial court, the' result would have been different.

Relies on Hammond v. State · Coleman v. State · Lewis v. State

Good law ✅— No negative treatment on recordhow we know

Decided 1910-10-15

How this case has been cited

Cited by 7 later decisions — most recently November 2004

7 state decisions

401910192019301940195019601970198019902000decided

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 →

Mayes, O. I.,

¶1delivered the opinion of the court.

¶2John Anderson was indicted in Clarke county for the murder of one Staten Calvert some time in the year 1909. He was tried and convicted of manslaughter, and sentenced to the penitentiary, for twenty years, and from .this conviction prosecutes an appeal to this court.

¶3In regard to the facts of the case, we need only say that the conviction was fully warranted, and the verdict cannot be dis*660turbed, unless there is error in the trial court’s instructions. It is contended for appellant that the court erred in refusing the following instruction, viz.: “The court instructs the jury, for the defendant, that if they believe, from the evidence in this case, that at the time of the killing the defendant bore a good character for peace, then said evidence may, of itself, raise a reasonable doubt in the mind of the jury as to the guilt of the defendant, and entitle him to a verdict of not guilty.” It is quite true that this court seems to have approved .this instruction in the case of Lewis v. State, 93 Miss. 697, 47 South. 467; but any discussion of the instruction was entirely unnecessary, and outside of any question that the court was compelled to- decide at the time. But if this is not exactly correct, so far as the decision in the Lewis case, supra, approves this instruction, it must be overruled. The decision in the Lewis case is in conflict with three different decisions of this court holding the reverse of what is declared in the Lewis case, supra.

¶4The true statement of the law is to be found in the case of Coleman v. State, 59 Miss. 484, and is as follows, viz.: “Evidence of the good character of the accused should go to the jury as any other fact, and its influence in the determination of a case should be left to the jury, without any intimation of the court of its value. The court should not tell the jury that satisfactory evidence of the good character of the accused is or is not sufficient to raise a reasonable doubt of his guilt. The jury is to have the evidence as an aid to estimate the other evidence, and by the light of. the whole to reach a verdict.” The law announced by the Coleman case as above quoted was followed by this court in the case of Hammond v. State, 74 Miss. 214, 21 South. 149, and Powers v. State, 74 Miss 777, 21 South. 657.

¶5Affirmed.

/97/miss/658 · .json · Public domain