The statutory instructions as determined by the trial judge to be warranted by the evidence shall be given in the charge and in writing to the jury for its deliberation. The jury, if its verdict be a unanimous recommendation of death, shall designate in writing, signed by the foreman of the jury, the statutory aggravating circumstance or circumstances which it unanimously found beyond a reasonable doubt. Unless at least one (1) of the statutory aggravated circumstances enumerated in Section 99-19-101 is so found or if it is found that any such aggravating circumstance is overcome by the finding of one or more mitigating circumstances, the death penalty shall not be imposed. If the jury cannot, within a reasonable time, agree as to punishment, the judge shall dismiss the jury and impose a sentence of imprisonment for life.
Miss. Code Ann. § 99-19-103
Instructions; aggravating circumstances shall be designated by jury in writing upon recommending death; effect of jury’s failure to agree on punishment
Applied in 42 court decisions — leading case Gray v. Lucas (1982)
Most recently applied in Timothy Nelson Evans v. State of Mississippi (June 2017)
Laws, 1977, ch. 458, § 3; Laws, 1994, ch. 566, § 4, eff from and after July 1, 1994.
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.