Hyman v. State
Hyman v. State
Opinion of the Court
delivered the opinion of the court.
The defendant’s testimony was not an admission of a sale. On the contrary, he contradicted Price, and stated that his account of the affair, and not Price’s, was the correct one. We. cannot notice the assignment as to the improper admission of' evidence, because throughout the entire trial no objection was. made to the admission of the testimony. But the instruction given for the state is properly before us, and it is only necessary once more to make reference to the emphatic utterances of this court in Naul v. McComb City, 70 Miss., 701 (by Cooper, J.); King v. State, 66 Miss., 502 (by Arnold, J.); Bailey v. State, 67 Miss., 334 (by Campbell, J.); and Ware v. State, 71 Miss., 205 (by Woods, J.), to show that the charge was manifestly wrong, and, on the range the proof took, reversible error. This court has iterated and reiterated the rule that, in cases of this character, the evidence must be confined to one sale. Yet, in this case, evidence was offered to show numberless sales, scattered through a period of four years, and the court actually charged the jury that if they believed, from the evidence, that the defendant ‘ ‘ did sell and retail vinous and spirituous liquors between the year 1892 and the year 1896 in the county of Claiborne, then he was guilty, and they should so find. ’ ’
Reversed and remanded.
Reference
- Full Case Name
- Benjamin F. Hyman v. The State of Mississippi
- Status
- Published
- Syllabus
- Unlawful Sale of Intoxicating Liquors. Distinct sales. Instruction. It is error, upon the trial of a defendant for the unlawful sale of intoxicating liquor, to admit evidence of more than one sale, and, if such evidence is admitted without objection, it is error to give an instruction -for the state which ignores the rule in such cases that the conviction must be predicated of one sale.