The judge in any criminal cause, shall not sum up or comment on the testimony, or charge the jury as to the weight of evidence; but at the request of either party he shall instruct the jury upon the principles of law applicable to the case. All instructions asked by either party must be in writing, and all alterations or modifications of instructions given by the court or refused shall be in writing, and those given may be taken out by the jury on its retirement. The clerk, before they are read or given to the jury, shall mark all instructions asked by either party, or given by the court, as being “given” or “refused,” as the case may be, and all instructions so marked shall be a part of the record, on appeal, without a bill of exceptions.
Miss. Code Ann. § 99-17-35
Instructions to jury
Applied in 27 court decisions — leading case 592 So. 2d 114 - Hansen v. State (1991)
Most recently applied in Chad Willard v. State of Mississippi (May 2017)
Codes, Hutchinson’s 1848, ch. 61, art. 1(144); 1857, ch. 61, art. 161; 1871, § 643; 1880, § 1714; 1892, § 732; 1906, § 793; Hemingway’s 1917, § 577; 1930, § 586; 1942, § 1530.
How often courts cite this section
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.
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.