Prince v. State

Citations

• 93 Miss. 263
• 46 So. 537

Syllabus

<p>1. Criminal Law and Procedure. Instructions. Must he predicated of evidence. Homicide.</p> <p>An instruction for the state in a murder case, authorizing a conviction upon a finding that defendant, while attempting to commit burglary, shot and killed decedent, shoúld not be given in the absence of all evidence of such an attempt.</p> <p>2. Same. Evidence. Defendant’s failure to testify. Comment. Code 1906, § 1918.</p> <p>The defendant in a criminal case not having become a witness, and there being no evidence of a confession except as testified to by the .only person claimed to have heard it, a statement by the prosecuting attorney in argument to the jury to the effect that defendant’s confession stood wholly uncontradicted is violative of Code 1906, § 1918, forbidding comment by counsel on the failure of an accused to testify in his own behalf.</p> <p>3. Same. Attorney’s disclaimer of intent, etc. '</p> <p>Such statement constitutes reversible error, although the prosecuting attorney, on objection made, disclaimed intent to refer to defendant’s failure to testify.</p>