Case ID: miss_95/html/0670-01.html
Source: Caselaw Access Project
Author: {"author": "Mates, J.,", "license": "Public Domain", "url": "https://static.case.law/"}
Date Created: 2024-08-24T03:29:51.129683

Olive Brown v. State of Mississippi.
    [49 South. 146.]
    ’Criminal Law and Procedure. Infanticide. Evidence.
    
    Evidence showing that a woman was delivered of a living child while in the toilet room of a passenger car, and that it passed through the stool to the ground and was killed, will not warrant a conviction of the mother of infanticide, her undisputed claim being that she was sitting on the stool when she first recognized that she was about to be delivered and that she could not prevent the child from falling to the ground.
    Erom the circuit court of Jefferson Davis county.
    Hon. Bobert L. Bullard, Judge.
    Olive Brown, appellant, a negro girl about seventeen years of age, was indicted, tried, convicted and sentenced under an indictment charging her with infanticide; and appealed to the supreme court.
    Being fax advanced in pregnancy, appellant was traveling with her father on a railroad passenger train. Her father observed that she seemed to be unwell. In a few moments after-wards she arose from her seat, walked to the toilet room of the coach and entered it, closing the door behind her. Her father, thinking her unwell, assumed a position near the door. After being in the toilet room a short time, appellant called her father :and told him that she had been delivered of a child and had lost it, that it had fallen through the stool in the -room, that she was sitting on the stool and suddenly recognized that the child was passing from her, but too late to prevent it falling to the ground below. Tbe child was found shortly after the passage of the train and was alive, but died almost as soon as it was found.
    
      Touchstone & Salter, for appellant.
    
      George Butler, assistant attorney-general, for appellee.
   Mates, J.,

delivered the opinion of the court.

Revolting as is the occurrence which is shown by the record in this case, we think the testimony utterly fails to show that the appellant was guilty of any crime under the law.

Reversed, and prosecution dismissed.