Case Name: Louis JONES v. STATE of Mississippi
Court: Mississippi Supreme Court
Jurisdiction: Mississippi
Decision Date: 1979-03-28
Citations: 368 So. 2d 1265
Docket Number: No. 50727
Parties: Louis JONES v. STATE of Mississippi.
Judges: PATTERSON, C. J., ROBERTSON, P. J., and BROOM, LEE, BOWLING and COF-ER, JJ., concur; PATTERSON, C. J., specially concurs.
Reporter: Southern Reporter, Second Series
Volume: 368
Pages: 1265–1273

Head Matter:
Louis JONES v. STATE of Mississippi.
No. 50727.
Supreme Court of Mississippi.
March 28, 1979.
John L. Hatcher, Cleveland, for appellant.
A. F. Summer, Atty. Gen., by Carolyn B. Mills, Special Asst. Atty. Gen., Jackson, for appellee.

Opinion:
SMITH, Presiding Justice,
for the Court:
In this case Louis Jones and Clarence Hawkins were indicted jointly for grand larceny in connection with the theft of a tractor. Hawkins entered a plea of guilty, but sentencing was deferred pending the trial of Jones. Jones pled not guilty and was tried in the Circuit Court of Sunflower County, convicted largely upon the testimony of Hawkins, and sentenced to a term of three (3) years imprisonment.
These facts relating to the larceny are undisputed: Hawkins, who lived in Indiano-la, rented a U-Haul van-type truck. He drove this truck to Cleveland where the tractor, which was the subject of the larceny, was loaded into the van. Hawkins then drove the truck, containing the tractor, to Arkansas. After spending the night at a motel, the next day Hawkins sold the tractor for $7,000.00 In connection with the sale, Hawkins executed an affidavit of ownership and a bill of sale to the purchaser. Hawkins received the purchaser's check for $7,000.00 in payment for the tractor. Af-terwards, Hawkins returned to Mississippi and cashed the check.
According to Hawkins, Jones' role in the larceny was as follows: Hawkins had met Jones in January, 1977, and Jones had given him a card with his name and telephone numbers on it. The crime was committed on February 20, 1977. Hawkins testified that he had rented the van-type truck in Indianola because Jones had telephoned him and asked him to do so. He said that he brought the truck to Cleveland and left it on a parking lot near a hospital pursuant to directions given him by Jones in the telephone conversation. According to Hawkins, he had given Jones the keys and, when he again picked up the truck the tractor was in it, presumably placed there by Jones. Jones' further participation, Hawkins said, had consisted in giving him, Hawkins, the blank printed form of bill of sale which Hawkins used in selling the tractor. Hawkins said he gave Jones $4,500.00 of the $7,000.00 check received by Hawkins and which Hawkins had cashed, keeping only $2,500.00.
Jones emphatically denies having participated in any way in Hawkins' felonious activities. Moreover, the testimony of two witnesses, at least one of whom must be said to have had no interest in the case, placed Jones, at the critical time, at a motel in Cleveland so that he could not have been at the place at which Hawkins' testimony would have required him to be. The identification of Jones by this witness was positive and circumstantial.
There is no substantial or significant corroboration of Hawkins' testimony incriminating Jones. A witness, one Williams, placed on the stand by the State, testified that he lived "out in the country" from Cleveland on a dead end road, and on the night in question, had learned that a van-type truck was in the ditch in front of his house. Williams said that he had not known the driver of the truck, but that a man in a green station wagon had stopped and that he, Williams, had pulled the truck out of the ditch and the man who had arrived in the green station wagon had paid him $10.00. On direct examination he was asked to identify Jones as the driver of the green station wagon and he said that the man in the station wagon had been Jones. Williams testified that the incident had occurred shortly after 10:00 at night, that a "yard light" furnished the only illumination and that it was "pretty dark." He admitted that he had never seen Jones before and only saw him for a few moments on the night in question. He said that the van had not contained a tractor when he saw it, but that he remembered it did not have a "local" tag.
On cross-examination, however, Williams frankly admitted that the officers had taken him on a search specifically to find Jones, taking him to Jones' place of business, to determine if he could identify him as the man in the green station wagon. With this suggestive identification procedure as a background, Williams, on direct examination, undertook to say that Jones had been the man. However, on cross-examination, he admitted, in all candor, that he was not sure of the identification of Jones and described his "identification" of Jones as follows:
"Q. . I believe you stated that you were reasonably sure, or something to that effect, although not absolutely positive.
A. Yes.
Q. That's what you told me?
A. Yes.
Q. That out of all the people you have been shown, that this one came the closest?
A. Yes."
Apart from the above, there was no evidence capable of supplying reasonable corroboration of Hawkins' statements involving Jones in the crime.
The only other items supposedly corroborative of Hawkins consisted of a telephone call from a barbeque place in Indianola to a pizza hut in Cleveland, and another telephone call from Jitney, Jr. in Indianola to Coleman's Barbeque in Cleveland, and testimony regarding some ramps allegedly used by Hawkins. These items were not tied in with Jones with sufficient clarity or certainty as to render them competent and their prejudicial effect far outweighs any probative value they might have had.
The case against Jones, a man of no previous criminal record, rests then upon the testimony of Hawkins, a convicted felon awaiting sentence following his plea of guilty, which is flatly contradicted by Jones and two other witnesses. At every point from beginning to end, where there is corroboration, it was Hawkins himself who acted. His statement that everything he did was in compliance with a request from Jones, a man he had known only two or three weeks, strains credulity. It is noted that the points at which Hawkins said Jones was involved had the virtue, from Hawkins' standpoint, of being such as could not easily be disproved. Every fact capable of being proved, other than by Hawkins' own testimony, showed Hawkins acting alone.
Among other grounds assigned for reversal, it is contended on behalf of Jones that the trial court erred in denying his request for a new trial which was based upon the ground that the verdict was against the weight of the evidence.
Throughout the history of criminal jurisprudence in Mississippi, the sufficiency of evidence to support a conviction has been reviewed by this Court where there has been (1) a request for peremptory instruction, and (2) a motion has been made for a new trial upon the ground that the guilty verdict was against the weight of the totality of the evidence. A succinct statement of the extent and nature of the review in such cases appears in Roberson v. State, 257 So.2d 505 (Miss.1977):
We have repeatedly pointed out that the trial judge in passing upon a motion for a directed verdict, or a peremptory instruction, must assume that all the evidence for the State is true, and must assume that all the reasonable inferences that may be drawn from the evidence by the jury of reasonable men, is true, and if, from all the testimony, there is enough in the record to support a verdict, the motion for a peremptory instruction should be overruled. Redwine v. State, 149 Miss. 741, 115 So. 889 (1928).
This rule does not, however, preclude the judge from considering all the testimony for the State and defendant on a motion for a new trial upon the ground that the verdict of the jury is against the weight of the evidence. McLendon v. State, 187 Miss. 247, 191 So. 821 (1939). 257 So.2d at 507.
In reviewing the totality of the evidence in the case now before the Court, it has been pointed out that under the rule in Mississippi, long established and consistently adhered to, the testimony of Hawkins, the convicted accomplice and felon, must be viewed with great caution and suspicion. Where it is uncorroborated, it must also be reasonable, not improbable, self-contradictory or substantially impeached. Thomas v. State, 340 So.2d 1 (Miss.1976); Black v. State, 336 So.2d 1302 (Miss.1976); Hutchins v. State, 220 So.2d 276 (Miss.1969); Cole v. State, 217 Miss. 779, 65 So.2d 262 (1953); Young v. State, 255 So.2d 318 (Miss.1971); Pegram v. State, 228 Miss. 860, 89 So.2d 846 (1956); Perdue v. State, 199 Miss. 624, 25 So.2d 185 (1946); Lyle v. State, 193 Miss. 102, 8 So.2d 459 (1942); Nichols v. State, 174 Miss. 271, 164 So. 20 (1935).
In Burks v. United States , 437 U.S. 1, 98 S.Ct. 2141, 57 L.Ed.2d 1, decided June 14, 1978, the United States Supreme Court reexamined the rule which had hitherto existed that where a motion was made for a new trial on the basis of insufficiency of the evidence to support a conviction, the appellate court, upon sustaining the motion, might remand the case for another trial. Burks had been tried in a district court on a charge of having robbed a federally insured bank by using a dangerous weapon. Burks interposed as his defense a claim that he had been insane at the time, placing upon the prosecution the burden of proving his sanity. To meet this burden, the prosecution offered two experts, one of whom testified that Burks was not mentally ill and the other gave an ambiguous answer to the question of whether Burks had been capable of conforming his conduct under the law. All the other testimony offered to prove that Burks had been sane consisted of lay testimony that he had appeared to be capable of functioning normally at the time of the offense. Following his conviction, Burks moved for a new trial upon the ground that the evidence was insufficient to support the verdict. The motion was denied by the district court. The Court of Appeals, however, agreed that the evidence had been insufficient to support the verdict and reversed Burks' conviction. The Court of Appeals, rather than terminating the case against Burks, remanded it to the district court for determination of whether Burks' acquittal should be directed or a new trial ordered. This action by the Court of Appeals was based on a decision by the Fifth Circuit in United States v. Bass, 490 F.2d 846, 852-853 (5th Cir. 1974).
In Burks the Supreme Court specified and set forth the narrow issue in the following paragraph:
The United States has not cross-petitioned for certiorari on the question of whether the Court of Appeals was correct in holding that the Government had failed to meet its burden of proof with respect to the claim of insanity. Accordingly, that issue is not open for review here. Given this posture, we are squarely presented with the question of whether a defendant may be tried a second time when a reviewing court has determined that in a prior trial the evidence was insufficient to sustain the verdict of the jury. [Emphasis added].
437 U.S. at 5, 98 S.Ct. at 2144, 57 L.Ed.2d at 5.
With the issue thus limited and defined, the Supreme Court concluded:
The Double Jeopardy Clause forbids a second trial for the purpose of affording the prosecution another opportunity to supply evidence which it failed to muster in the first proceeding. This is central to the objective of the prohibition against successive trials. The Clause does not allow "the State . to make repeated attempts to convict an individual for an alleged offense," since "the constitutional prohibition against 'double jeopardy' was designed to protect an individual from being subjected to the hazards of trial and possible conviction more than once for an alleged offense." Green v. United States, 355 U.S. 184, 187, 78 S.Ct. 221, 223, 2 L.Ed.2d 199 (1957); see Serfass v. United States, 420 U.S. 377, 387-388, 95 S.Ct. 1055, 1061-1062, 43 L.Ed.2d 265 (1975); United States v. Jorn, 400 U.S. 470,479, 91 S.Ct. 547, 554, 27 L.Ed.2d 543 (1971).
Nonetheless, as the discussion in Part II, supra, indicates, our past holdings do not appear consistent with what we believe the Double Jeopardy Clause commands. A close re-examination of those precedents, however, persuades us that they have not properly construed the Clause, and accordingly should no longer be followed.
437 U.S. at 11, 98 S.Ct. at 2147, 57 L.Ed.2d at 9.
‡ ‡
In our view it makes no difference that a defendant has sought a new trial as one of his remedies, or even as the sole remedy. It cannot be meaningfully said that a person "waives" his right to a judgment of acquittal by moving for a new trial. See Green v. United States, 355 U.S., at 191-198, 78 S.Ct., at 225-229. Moreover, as Forman, supra [Forman v. United States] 361 U.S. [416], at 425, 80 S.Ct. [481], at 486 [4 L.Ed.2d 412] has indicated, an appellate court is authorized by § 2106 to "go beyond the relief sought" in order to provide that relief which would be "just under the circumstances." Since we hold today that the Double Jeopardy Clause precludes a second trial once the reviewing court has found the evidence legally insufficient, the only "just" remedy available for that court is the direction of a judgment of acquittal. To the extent that our prior decisions suggest that by moving for a new trial, a defendant waives his right to a judgment of acquittal on the basis of evidentiary insufficiency, those cases are overruled.
437 U.S. at 17, 98 S.Ct. at 2150, 57 L.Ed.2d at 13.
It has been suggested that the decision in Burks has curtailed or eliminated entirely the power of an appellate court to remand a criminal case for a new trial based upon the proposition that the totality of the evidence was insufficient to support the conviction. Although the issue actually decided in Burks was extremely narrow and the scope of the decision must be considered as being limited to the issue actually before the court, the language contained in the opinion has raised some doubt as to the power of this Court to follow its former practice, where there has been a motion for a new trial upon the ground that the verdict was against the weight of the evidence, to review the evidence as a whole, and to determine, as a matter of law, that the motion has been well taken and should be sustained, and to remand the case to the lower court for a new trial.
This case, however, in its material aspects, resembles Pegram v. State, 228 Miss. 860, 89 So.2d 846 (1956). In Pegram, Pegram had been convicted largely upon the uncorroborated testimony of an accomplice. The court reviewed the testimony in some detail and reached the conclusion that, based upon the totality of the circumstances and the probative value of all the evidence in the case, including the testimony of the accomplice when viewed with suspicion and caution, the verdict of guilty had been against the weight of the evidence and that Pegram, rather than being awarded a new trial, should be discharged, although two of the justices, while concurring in the reversal of the case, were of the opinion that the case should have been remanded for a new trial.
In Pegram, this Court said:
In numerous cases we have held that a person may be convicted upon the uncorroborated evidence of an accomplice, but we have also held that where there is strong testimony of an alibi a conviction will not be upheld. Admittedly Rose is a common and habitual criminal and although he entered a plea of guilty to this robbery he has never yet been sentenced. It could well be that he is hoping for clemency in consideration for his turning State's evidence in this case.

In the case of White v. State, 146 Miss. 815, 819,112 So. 27,28, we said: "Putting the case differently somewhat, we have a conviction here based alone on the testimony of an alleged accomplice who is a common thief and a common liar, and, in addition, whose story itself has many of the earmarks of falsehood. We do not think it amounted to any substantial evidence at all. Under the authority of Hunter v. State, 137 Miss. 276, 102 So. 282, and Abele v. State, 138 Miss. 772, 103 So. 370, we think the appellant was entitled to a directed verdict of not guilty."

In Creed v. State, 179 Miss. 700, 705, 176 So.'596, 597, we said: "The rule is well settled that, while a conviction may be sustained on the uncorroborated testimony of an accomplice, it is equally well settled that such a conviction should not be upheld where such testimony is improbable, self-contradictory, and unreasonable on its face, and especially where it is impeached by unimpeached witnesses. Day v. State (Miss.), 7 So. 326; Wright v. State, 130 Miss. 603, 94 So. 716; Hunter v. State, 137 Miss. 276, 102 So. 282; Abele v. State, 138 Miss. 772,103 So. 370; White v. State, 146 Miss. 815, 112 So. 27; Matthews v. State, 148 Miss. 696, 114 So. 816; Boutwell v. State, 165 Miss. 16, 143 So. 479; Harmon v. State, 167 Miss. 527, 142 So. 473; Rutledge v. State, 171 Miss. 311, 157 So. 907; Carter v. State (Miss.), 166 So. 377.
*
We have given careful consideration to the facts of this case and we have reached the conclusion that the evidence for the State, based solely upon the testimony of the witness Rose, the alleged accomplice, is so thoroughly impeached by the appellant's alibi that the judgment of conviction ought not to stand and that the appellant was entitled to the peremptory instruction which he requested.
228 Miss, at 870-872, 89 So.2d at 850-851.
In the light of Pegram, supra, and Burks, supra, (so far as the latter has application), Jones' conviction should not be allowed to stand.
An examination of the record of competent evidence reflects that Jones' conviction rests upon the uncorroborated testimony of Hawkins, a convicted felon and confessed accomplice, whose sentence was deferred pending the trial of Jones. As this Court said in Pegram, it is only reasonable to assume that under such circumstances Hawkins was under some constraint and had some wish not to offend the prosecuting authorities. Moreover, under all the authorities, his testimony must be viewed with caution and suspicion. It must not be "improbable, self-contradictory, and unreasonable on its face, and especially where it is impeached by unimpeached witnesses." Here, Hawkins' veracity is also impeached by proof of his conviction of this felony. We have concluded that Hawkins' testimony, thus viewed, did not amount "to any substantial evidence at all."
The testimony of Williams, placed on the stand in an effort to identify Jon s as the man who had paid $10.00 to have him pull a van-type truck out of a ditch (the van itself, Williams said, was being driven by another and unidentified person) is refuted by the positive testimony of witnesses that Jones was elsewhere at the time the incident occurred. Also, there is an absence of any cogent explanation of how the incident fitted in with the story of the larceny as related by Hawkins. Considering that this witness had never seen Jones before and saw him on the occasion in question only for a few moments late at night, with a "yard light" supplying the only illumination, the witness testifying that it was "pretty dark", coupled with the suggestive procedure followed by the officers in taking the witness specifically to find Jones to be identified as this man, with the final admission of Williams that he was uncertain of the identification, taken all together, effectively destroy the probative value of Williams' testimony as an identification of Jones.
Although we have considered the effect of the decision of the United States Supreme Court in Burks, supra, on the case now before us, we have concluded that it is not necessary to resort to it in the disposition of the present case which we believe falls within the rule laid down in Pegram, supra. Under the rule there stated, and under the totality of the circumstances, the conviction of Jones must be reversed and Jones discharged.
REVERSED AND APPELLANT DISCHARGED.
PATTERSON, C. J., ROBERTSON, P. J., and BROOM, LEE, BOWLING and COF-ER, JJ., concur; PATTERSON, C. J., specially concurs.
SUGG and WALKER, JJ., dissent.