Title: Neighbors v. State

State: mississippi

Issuer: Mississippi Supreme Court

Document:

361 So. 2d 345 (1978) Roscoe Gene NEIGHBORS v. STATE of Mississippi. No. 50197. Supreme Court of Mississippi. August 9, 1978. Caldwell, Lee, Richardson & Vance, L. Joe Lee, Jackson, for appellant. A.F. Summer, Atty. Gen., by Catherine Walker Underwood, Special Asst. Atty. Gen., Jackson, for appellee. EN BANC. SUGG, Justice, for the Court: The defendant, Roscoe Gene Neighbors, was convicted of murder and sentenced to life imprisonment by the Circuit Court of the First Judicial District of Hinds County. The primary question for decision is whether the homicide constituted murder or manslaughter. The indictment charging defendant with murder was drawn under the provisions of section 99-7-37 Mississippi Code Annotated (1972) which provides in part the following: *346 The indictment charged defendant with murder in the following language: In Carroll v. State, 183 Miss. 1, 183 So. 703 (1938) we held that section 99-7-37 covers all homicides, both statutory and at common law, and under an indictment drawn in accordance with the statute any facts that evidence murder or manslaughter may be introduced. In Sessums v. State, 221 So. 2d 368 (Miss. 1969) we held that an indictment for a homicide does not have to set forth the manner in which, or the means by which, the death of deceased was caused, but it is sufficient to charge murder in the language of the statute, whether it was a premeditated killing or a homicide resulting from the commission of the crime of arson. In Sessums we held that the state's instructions could properly set forth both theories of murder and reaffirmed the holding of Carroll, supra, that any facts which evidence murder or manslaughter may be introduced. Mrs. Azevedo, the mother of four-year-old Mary Anne Azevedo, testified that she, defendant, and her children moved to Jackson from Bakersfield, California about three months before the fatal beating of Mary Anne. She testified that for the two weeks preceding the death of Mary Anne she had asked the defendant not to strike Mary Anne and that she was going to leave him if he did not stop hitting the child. She further testified that on the night of Mary Anne's death she was outside hanging clothes about 8:30 or 9:00 o'clock p.m. Mary Anne came out of the house crying and told her mother that "Daddy had kicked her in the stomach." The defendant came out of the house and shortly all three went back inside the house. She saw defendant double up his fist and shove Mary Anne because, "she had messed in her pants." Mrs. Azevedo went into the kitchen and when she returned to the bedroom about twenty minutes later she saw Mary Anne lying on the floor unconscious with the defendant bending over her. The child died two or three hours later. An autopsy was performed by Dr. Forrest G. Bratley, a pathologist, who testified as follows: In discussing the two most important considerations as to the cause of death, Dr. Bratley testified: The question for decision is whether the evidence is sufficient to support the verdict finding defendant guilty of murder. Section 97-3-19 Mississippi Code Annotated (Supp. 1977) provides in part the following: We hold that the proof was sufficient to support a conviction of murder under subsection (b) of section 97-3-19. The defendant, who is an adult, kicked the defenseless four-year-old child in the stomach hard enough to cause hemorrhages inside her abdominal cavity, on the surface of the intestine, and in the mesentery, and in addition, delivered a blow to her head hard enough to jostle her brain and cause a massive hemorrhage inside her cranial cavity. The defendant was guilty of murder because he killed the child by striking her, and this was "done in the commission of an act eminently dangerous to others, and evincing a depraved heart, regardless of human life ..." AFFIRMED. PATTERSON, C.J., SMITH and ROBERTSON, P. JJ., and WALKER, BROOM, LEE, BOWLING and COFER, JJ., concur.