Williams v. State

Citations

• 95 Miss. 671
• 49 So. 513

Syllabus

<p>1. Criminal Law and Procedure. Homicide. Instructions. Construction.</p> <p>Instructions in a case must be read together and construed as a whole; and if, when so construed, they announce the law correctly the purpose for which they are given is accomplished.</p> <p>2. Same. Same. Circumstantial evidence. Harmless error.</p> <p>An instruction that, when “circumstantial evidence arises high enough in the scale of belief to generate full conviction in the minds of the jury of the guilt of defendant to the exclusion of every reasonable doubt, the jury should act on such evidence as readily as they would on any other kind of evidence,” is erroneous, since such evidence cannot be said to prove guilt beyond a reasonable doubt, unless it excludes every other reasonable hy- ' pothesis than that of guilt, but its grant is not reversible error, where other instructions fully and clearly announce the law on the subject in such a way as to render the erroneous one harmless.</p> <p>S. Same. Same. Competency of evidence.</p> <p>The jury should not be instructed that “circumstantial evidence is legal and competent,” since it has no concern with the competency or legality, of evidence, but an instruction so advising tbe jury does not constitute reversible error where the record fails to show that it was prejudicial.</p> <p>4. Same. Same. Accepting modifications.</p> <p>By accepting and using an instruction as modified by the court a party waives his objection to the modification.</p> <p>5. Same. Same. Clerical error. Omission of negative.</p> <p>A conviction will not be reversed for the inadvertent omission of the word “not” before the word “guilty,” in an instruction, where it is manifest that the jury was not thereby misled.</p>