Boyd v. State

Citations

• 84 Miss. 414

Syllabus

<p>1. Criminal Law. Murder. Poisoning. Evidence. Declarations res jestae. Symptoms of suffering.</p> <p>In a prosecution for murder by poisoning the declarations of tbe deceased describing the symptoms of her then present sufferings are admissible in evidence, but a narration of the symptoms of past sufferings is inadmissible.</p> <p>2. Same. Chemical experiments.</p> <p>On a prosecution for murder by poisoning with arsenic where a physician, as a state’s witness, produced several bottles which he testified ’ contained the medicines which he had prescribed for the deceased during her last illness and showed the effects of arsenic on each of them, changing the color of the liquids, it was error to permit the state to prove that defendant, during the last illness of deceased, gave her a punctured orange, which she refused to eat, from which juice oozed of a color like one of the medicines with which arsenic had been mixed, in the absence of evidence showing that the orange contained poison or that any of the medicine taken by deceased had been changed in color.</p> <p>3. Same.</p> <p>In a prosecution for murder by poisoning, it having been shown that deceased had been taking certain dyspepsia medicine and that the bottle containing the medicine had been kept on a shelf, in a room to which a number of persons had access, it was error to permit a witness to testify that the deceased told him, in the absence of the defendant, where she had placed the bottle of medicine, that when witness looked for it there it had been moved, and that it was afterwards found on another shelf, hidden by other bottles, having in it a liquid containing poison and of a different color from the medicine.</p> <p>4. Same.</p> <p>Where the theory of the state was that defendant had poisoned his deceased wife in order that he might continue illicit relations with another woman, and there was no evidence whatever tending to show that such woman was in any way implicated in administering any poison