Woods v. State

Mississippi Supreme Court
Woods v. State, 67 Miss. 575 (Miss. 1890)
Woods

Woods v. State

Opinion of the Court

Woods, C. J.,

delivered the opinion of the court.

The motion in arrest of judgment was properly overruled. The verbal criticism of counsel is ingenious and interesting, in its philological aspect. But it is a legal anachronism to now plead to the sufficiency of an indictment that it charges a defendant with shooting on a highway, when the statute denounces shooting in the highway. The prepositions are interchangeable in this connection, just as they are in prosecutions for racing on the highway. In this sense what occurs on the highway must be held to occur in it also. The administration of the criminal law declines such subtle distinctions in definitions.

The case must be reversed, however, because of the error of the court below in granting the one charge asked by the state. The appellant was the only witness offered by the defense, and this one charge is clearly obnoxious to the condemnation pronounced in Buckley v. The State, 62 Miss. 705. The only safety of the defendant lay in his own testimony, and, as was said with great force in the case just referred to, “he had the right to submit his testimony to the jury to be judged of by it, uninfluenced by any suggestions of its probable falsity, or an authorization to the jury to throw it aside as unworthy of belief because of the strong temptation of the defendant to swear falsely.”

Reversed and remanded.

Reference

Full Case Name
Eph. Woods v. State
Cited By
15 cases
Status
Published
Syllabus
1. Criminal Law. Code 1880, § 2941. Shooting in highway. Under this statute, which makes it an offense to “shoot in any highway,” an indictment is good which charges the defendant with shooting “ ore' a public highway.” 2. Same. Instruction. Discrediting defendant's testimony. Where the defendant in a criminal case is the only witness in his behalf, it is error to give an instruction that the jury should consider the feeling or interest of any witness in connection with all the testimony “in determining how far, if at all, they will believe such witness or consider such testimony.” The defendant is entitled to submit his testimony to the jury uninfluenced by such suggestions from the court. Buckley v. The State, 62 Miss. 705, cited.