Raines v. State

Citations

• 81 Miss. 489

Syllabus

<p>1. Criminal Law and Procedure. Misconduct of audience. Applause.</p> <p>Misconduct of an audience, committed to affect the result of a trial, may infect the proceeding with fatal error. If an audience applaud the oration of a prosecuting attorney, the trial court should take prompt and decisive action to rebuke the breach of propriety and admonish the jury not to be misled by it.</p> <p>2. Same. Evidence, scope of.</p> <p>Evidence should be confined to the issue joined, and in criminal cases it should be directed exclusively to the transactions of which the indictment is predicated.</p> <p>3. Same. Previous crimes.</p> <p>Upon the trial of an indictment, a previous crime committed by defendant can be proved only:</p> <p>(a) Where it is connected with the one charged in the indictment, and sheds light upon the motive of defendant; or,</p> <p>(p) Where it forms a part of a chain of facts so intimately connected that the whole must be heard in order to interpret its several parts; or,</p> <p>(e) In cases of conspiracy, uttering forged instruments or counterfeit coin and receiving stolen goods, for the sole purpose of showing a criminal intention.</p> <p>4. Same. Murder. Evidence. Case.</p> <p>It was error for the trial court, over the objection of a defendant on trial for the murder of his wife, to permit the state to prove:</p> <p>(a) That defendant had cursed and ill-treated the deceased for ten years before her death, and had committed many simple assaults upon her;</p> <p>(p) That three weeks before her death the accused, while drunk, told deceased that he would divorce her because she was slovenly in her dress;</p> <p>(e) That shot holes were in the walls of defendant’s residence, there being nothing to show when or how they were made;</p> <p>(d) That a witness who denied that defendant had made incriminating statements to him had told others that such statements were made by defendant.</p> <p>5. Same. Instructions. Legal presumptions.</p> <p>Where the circumst