Title: Warn v. State

State: mississippi

Issuer: Mississippi Supreme Court

Document:

349 So. 2d 1055 (1977) Willie Edward WARN v. STATE of Mississippi. No. 49852. Supreme Court of Mississippi. September 21, 1977. Sims & Sims, C. Darrell Reeves, Jr., Richard E. Burdine, Columbus, for appellant. A.F. Summer, Atty. Gen., by Wayne Snuggs, Sp. Asst. Atty. Gen., Jackson, for appellee. Before SMITH, P.J., BROOM and LEE, JJ., and SULLIVAN, Commissioner. MICHAEL SULLIVAN, Commissioner for the Court:[1] Rape was the offense for which appellant, Willie Edward Warn, was tried and convicted in the Circuit Court of Lowndes County, Mississippi. He appeals from a judgment requiring him to serve thirty years imprisonment. We affirm. No purpose would be served by setting out the facts in this case. Suffice it to say that the appellant's sole contention is that the trial court's denial of peremptory instruction to return a verdict of not guilty was error. The basis of appellant's argument is that the prosecutrix did not resist with reasonable force. Peremptory instructions should be refused if there is enough evidence to support a verdict. There was. The law regarding peremptory instructions in Mississippi is stated in Cochran v. State, 278 So. 2d 451, 453 (Miss. 1973): See Newton v. State, 321 So. 2d 298 (Miss. 1975); Daniels v. State, 312 So. 2d 706 (Miss. 1975); Norman v. State, 302 So. 2d 254 (Miss. 1974), cert. den. 421 U.S. 966, 95 S. Ct. 1956, 44 L. Ed. 2d 453 (1975); Fields v. State, 293 So. 2d 430 (Miss. 1974). The basic rule was recently restated in Rich v. State, 322 So. 2d 468, 469 (Miss. 1975), where this Court quoted the following passage from Roberson v. State, 257 So. 2d 505 (Miss. 1972): In McGee v. Coccaro, 261 So. 2d 465 (Miss. 1972), this Court said: When this rule is applied to this case, it is clear that it was not error to deny the peremptory instruction. We therefore affirm the judgment in this case. AFFIRMED. PATTERSON, C.J., INZER and SMITH, P. JJ., and ROBERTSON, SUGG, WALKER, BROOM, LEE and BOWLING, JJ., concur. [1] pursuant to Chapter 430, Laws of 1976. The above opinion is adopted as the opinion of the Court.