42 So. 542 | Miss. | 1906
delivered the opinion of the court.
This was a very close case upon the evidence, making it, consequently, of vital importance that there should be no material error of law committed by the court below against the appellant. The court refused to give for the appellant instruction B, which is as follows: “The court instructs the jury that in connection with the circumstances that, after the killing of David White, the defendant went to his home, they may also consider the fact, if such is proved, that on the day after the night on which he returned home he voluntarily notified the sheriff of Attala county that he would come in on Friday, the next day, and give himself up, and that on Friday, the next day, he did voluntarily come to the town of Kosciusko, and voluntarily surrendered himself to the sheriff.” It is insisted by the assistant attorney-general that this was cured by the seventeenth instruction given for appellant, which ivas as follows: “The court instructs the jury, for the defendant, that flight, even when proved, may only be considered as a circumstance of guilt; and, unless the evidence in this ease is so positive and certain as to produce in the minds of the jury the solemn conviction that the defendant, beyond all reasonable doubt, is guilty, then their verdict should be for the defendant.” We do not think so. It was clearly error to refuse this instruction.
The court also refused instruction A, which is as follows: “The court further instructs the jury, for the defendant, that each and every one of you is entitled to have his own conception of what constitutes a reasonable doubt of the guilt of the defendant; that before you can convict this defendant the evidence must be so strong that it convinces each juror of the defendant’s guilt beyond every reasonable doubt; and if, after a consideration of the evidence, or the want of evidence, a single juror has a reasonable doubt of the defendant’s guilt, then you cannot convict him under this charge.” The assistant
The refusal of instruction A is also clear error. So long as the fundamental proposition remains that the verdict of a jury must be unanimous, and that, in criminal trials, a reasonable doubt of the defendant’s guilt, arising out of the evidence, prevents a conviction, it must follow, as the inexorably logical result, that such reasonable doubt entertained by any one juror, after full conference with his fellow jurymen, and a fair and honest weighing of the law as given, and the evidence in the case, must equally prevent a conviction. It will not do to say that the charge means that, if one so doubts, the jury must acquit. That wrests plain language, and contravenes the simple, natural and manifest import of the charge, which is, merely, if one juror so doubts, it is his duty, acting at last on his oath, on his best judgment, after such conference and consideration, to stand on that judgment and prevent an illegal conviction. The danger is, not that one juror will influence eleven, and procure thus an improper acquittal; but that the
"We have thus fully noticed these two cases, because they are the only two (from the same state, too) which Mr. Thompson (Thompson on Trials, vol. 2, sec. 2495) cites as intimating a variance from the general doctrine. Mr. Thompson himself, one of the most accurate and accomplished of law writers, approved the general doctrine thus stated by the supreme court of Indiana. Clem v. State, 42 Ind., 420: “Each juror should
It will not avail against this reasoning and concurrence of judicial opinion to say that so to hold is to overrefine. It is no more overrefining than the many approved instructions explanatory of reasonable doubt — nay, than the doctrine of reasonable doubt itself — is. We do not like to “entangle justice in matters of form,” but a principle like this, ruling in all criminal trials, from misdemeanor to treason, seems to us, not form, but vital substance, the crystallized growth of centuries of experience.
For these errors the judgment is reversed and the cause ■ remanded.