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Miss. Code Ann. § 97-17-13

Arson; willfully or negligently firing woods, marsh, meadow, etc.; restitution of fire suppression costs

Applied in 3 court decisions — leading case United States v. Knight (2010)

Most recently applied in United States v. Knight (June 2010)

Codes, Hutchinson’s 1848, ch. 13, art. 5(1); 1857, ch. 28, art. 1; 1871, § 2741; 1880, § 2816; 1892, § 1091; 1906, § 1172; Hemingway’s 1917, § 901; 1930, § 928; 1942, § 2157; La…

How often courts cite this section

2001201010
citing decisions per year

Court decisions citing this, by year. The dip in the last several years is a data-coverage gap, not a real trend — our corpus holds fewer opinions from the most recent years, so recent citations are undercounted.

(1) If any person willfully, maliciously, and feloniously sets on fire any woods, meadow, marsh, field or prairie, not his own, he is guilty of a felony and shall, upon conviction, be sentenced to the State Penitentiary for not more than two (2) years nor less than one (1) year, or fined not less than Two Hundred Dollars ($200.00) nor more than One Thousand Dollars ($1,000.00), or both, in the discretion of the court.

(2) If any person recklessly or with gross negligence causes fire to burn any woods, meadow, marsh, field or prairie, not his own, he is guilty of a misdemeanor and shall, on conviction, be fined not less than One Hundred Dollars ($100.00) nor more than Five Hundred Dollars ($500.00), or imprisoned in the county jail not more than three (3) months, or both, in the discretion of the court.

(3) If a person has a brush or debris pile or other material which is or was being burned and reasonable and prudent efforts were not taken to prevent the spread of the fire onto the lands of another shall be evidence that such person recklessly or with gross negligence caused the land to burn.

(4) In addition to the penalties provided in this section, upon conviction, a person shall be ordered to reimburse and pay in restitution directly to any organized fire suppression agency recognized by the Mississippi Forestry Commission all the costs the agency incurred related to the suppression and abatement of the fire.

Current official text: Mississippi Code (LexisNexis). Digitized from the UniCourt Code Improvement Commission public-domain capture. Reproduced from public-domain Mississippi statutes; confirm against the official source for the current text. Not legal advice.