White v. State

Citations

• 129 Miss. 182
• 91 So. 903

Syllabus

<p>1. Criminal Law. Confessions induced by fear involuntary.</p> <p>Confessions induced by fear, though not aroused by spoken threats, are nevertheless involuntary, because the fear which takes away the freedom may arise solely from the conditions and circumstances surrounding the confessor.</p> <p>2. Criminal Law. Confessions obtained by administering the “water ewe” held not voluntary.</p> <p>Where an ignorant negro boy was arrested and brought to the scene of a .horrible murder, and after he was released fell into the hands of infuriated planters and plantation managers, who took him into the store building where the bloody corpse lay, and with a crowd of armed white men assembled to obtain a confession, lie confessed to one of them, and then his hands were tied behind him, he was laid on the floor, and a white man stood on his body and they administered to him the “water cure,” which consisted in pouring water into his nose, confessions thus obtained were not free and voluntary.</p> <p>8. CniMmAi, Law. Exclusion of evidence showing that the same influence which rendered former confessions involuntary obtained in the confession introduced held error.</p> <p>Where confessions' were obtained 'at the scene of the murder by threats, duress, and physical violence, it was error to refuse to allow defendant’s counsel to introduce testimony showing a connection between such involuntary confessions, and another confession to some of the same parties subsequently made at the jail to show that the same influence obtained in the later confession rendering it involuntary.</p>