Boykin v. State

Citations

• 86 Miss. 481

Syllabus

<p>1. CRIMINAL Law. Murder. Trespasser. Instruction.</p> <p>Where the deceased was hilled while aiding a tenant to remove agricultural products from the leased premises, in violation of defendant’s rights, and over the protest of defendant, the landlord, he was a trespasser, and it was error to refuse defendant an instruction to that effect.</p> <p>2. Same. Self-defense.</p> <p>Where defendant killed deceased in a difficulty after deceased and his father had made an attempt to remove sugar cane to which they were not entitled from defendant’s land, it was error for the court to refuse to charge that, if deceased and his father were trespassers, defendant was entitled to use such reasonable force as might be necessary to prevent the trespass; that they were not entitled to resist such force, and, if the jury believed they employed means in resisting such force which were likely to produce death or inflict great bodily harm on defendant, he was entitled to meet such resistance, and if in so doing he wounded deceased, from which wound he died, the killing was justifiable.</p> <p>3. Same.</p> <p>In a prosecution for homicide, an instruction that if deceased assaulted defendant with a deadly weapon, “and not in necessary self-defense,” defendant was entitled to repel such assault by the use of a deadly weapon, and if, in repelling the same, defendant wounded deceased by cutting him with a knife, from which deceased died, then the killing was justifiable, was improperly modified by inserting the words quoted.</p> <p>4. Same.</p> <p>In a prosecution for homicide it was error for the court to modify a requested instruction that if deceased’s father began an assault on defendant with his fist, and, while thus assaulting defendant, deceased began beating him with a deadly weapon “at a time when defendant was not cutting [deceased] with his knife,” then defendant was entitled to defend himself against such attacks, even to the point of taking the life of either or both decease