46 So. 65 | Miss. | 1908
delivered the opinion of the court.
■The appellant, Anderson, in conjunction with eight other negroes was indicted for committing assault and battery upon W.
In the progress of the trial, a motion for change of venue was made by the appellants, in conformity with provisions of the statute on that subject, and on the hearing of that motion much testimony was taken. Each of the three judges of this court has severally read all of the testimony taken on the motion for change of venue. We might briefly summarize this testimony, in order to show that it is overwhelmingly demonstrated that the motion for change of venue should have been sustained. The testimony of Ive Morgan was to the effect that, if the right men should be got on the jury, there might be a fair and impartial trial; that he based this opinion on the good citizenship of the county, and what he meant by a fair and impartial trial was a trial in which a man should prove that he was innocent. G. H. Barney testified that a fair and impartial trial could not be had in the county, and that was his idea after going around over the county generally. Hollis Jones testified that defendants could not get a fair and impartial trial, and that pretty nearly every one he had heard express himself said that they were guilty, and, further, that he believed everybody in the county had heard something about the case. Ashley Reynolds testified that he had heard a heap of talk about the case, and that the only way to get a fair and impartial trial would be for some one who knew how to pick the jury. Ben Griffith testified that nearly .everybody in the county knew of the facts in the case, and that the people in general had prejudged the case and when pressed, on cross-examination, as to whether the crowd in which a motion was made to hang the negroes did not fight that motion down, he said: “They finally fought it down, but it was against the will of the people.” William Whittaker testified that he thought the
The state’s testimony, by a number of witnesses, is substantially that the witnesses believed a fair and impartial trial might be had in the county if the jurors were selected or picked; that there were as good men in Amite county as in any county — men who would do right, etc. One witness, Sam Robinson, in testifying this way, finally admits that there was ill will against these defendants, and, finally, he admitted that he had heard a number of people say that these defendants should be punished; “that they should get them out of there and break their necks.” And he further said, most significantly, on cross-examination, that there was a crowd right there, at the time of the trial, who
This was all the testimony on the part of the state. It will thus be seen that the substance of the testimony of the witnesses for the state, who said that they thought a fair trial could be had, was that this was based upon their opinion of the people of Amite county, upon their faith in the good citizenship of the county, and upon their belief that sworn men would give the defendants a fair and impartial trial, if they took the oath; while some even of the state’s witnesses admitted frankly that what they meant was that the defendants would have to prove themselves innocent, and that a fair and impartial jury could only be had by selecting or picking them. It is idle to talk about a fair and impartial trial to be had, on testimony such as is here set out, in the county at the time. The right to a fair and impartial trial is a sacred, constitutional right. To hold, on the testimony on a motion for a change of venue in this case, that these defendants were not entitled to a change of venue, would be to establish, as we have once before said, and now repeat, “too dangerous a doctrine surely to find any place in a jurisprudence framed under Bills of Nights in which, in the land of their origin, the right to maintain inviolate the jury trial has been written in blood with the point of the sword as the final declaration of freemen on the subject.” 1
In accordance with the principles announced in the case just quoted from, and especially in the case of Tennison v. State, 79
Reversed.