Case Name: Joe MAROONE, Jr. v. STATE of Mississippi
Court: Mississippi Supreme Court
Jurisdiction: Mississippi
Decision Date: 1975-07-28
Citations: 317 So. 2d 25
Docket Number: No. 48530
Parties: Joe MAROONE, Jr. v. STATE of Mississippi.
Judges: Before PATTERSON, SMITH and BROOM, JJ.
Reporter: Southern Reporter, Second Series
Volume: 317
Pages: 25–30

Head Matter:
Joe MAROONE, Jr. v. STATE of Mississippi.
No. 48530.
Supreme Court of Mississippi.
July 28, 1975.
Rehearing Denied Aug. 18, 1975.
Sullivan, Sullivan & Keyes, Jackson, for appellant.
A. F. Summer, Atty. Gen., by Catherine Walker, Sp. Asst. Atty. Gen., Jackson, for appellee.
Before PATTERSON, SMITH and BROOM, JJ.

Opinion:
BROOM, Justice:
Resisting arrest as prohibited in Mississippi Code Annotated section 97-3-7 (1972) was the charge for which Maroone was indicted and convicted in the Circuit Court of Madison County. Nine years in the state penitentiary was the sentence ordered by the trial judge. We affirm.
On the afternoon of May 5, 1974, the sister-in-law of the appellant caused warrants to issue from a justice of the peace charging the appellant and his mother with assault and battery upon her. The charges emanated from a dispute over the spilling of a cup of coffee on the child of the appellant. By telephone Maroone was advised by the justice of the peace of the warrant and asked to come in and make bond. Maroone refused to do so, insisting that he was innocent and stating that he was armed and wasn't going to be brought in.
Thereafter, between 10:30 p. m. and midnight, Deputy Sheriff Graves, accompanied by Constable Bowering and Bobby Brown, who was deputized and armed by the justice of the peace, journeyed to the appellant's residence to arrest him. Upon arrival the automobile's lights were trained upon Maroone's home where he was observed within armed with a rifle and pistol.
Maroone refused a request of the officers to come out even though advised by Bowering, the constable: "Joe, I have a shotgun pointed at you. Put your gun down and come out of the house." When importuned by his mother, who lived next door, Maroone consented to come out of the house to discuss the matter, but was adamant that he had done nothing and was not going anywhere.
Maroone carried a cocked -rifle with the barrel pointing downward and a holstered pistol on his hip when he emerged from the house. He refused requests by his mother and Graves to put these weapons down. When he approached to within six to eight feet of Graves and while being urged by his mother to put the gun down, he was told by Graves: "You're under arrest and you're going." Whereupon, according to Graves, Maroone jumped and the gun barrel came up with the following result: "I made a dive for the barrel and as soon as I grabbed the barrel of the gun just to move it out of my stomach, it went off and I took him on to the ground." The bullet from the rifle struck the holstered pistol of Graves and it also went off. A fragment of one of the bullets entered Graves' leg.
Maroone was subdued and later posted bond on the original warrant. The next day he was rearrested on the present charge.
Maroone's version of the affray was that he was physically charged by Graves while he was going out to confer with the officers and the gun fired only when it was jerked by the officer.
I.
The first point assigned as error is that the indictment was invalid and the court should have sustained the demurrer to it. We reject this argument.
The indictment, minus its formal parts, appears as follows:
. That Joe Maroone, Jr. in said County and State on the 5th day of May, A. D., 1974 did then and there willfully, unlawfully and feloniously in and upon the person of one Don Graves, Deputy Sheriff of Madison County, Mississippi, with a certain deadly weapon, to-wit: a rifle, an assault make, and he the said Joe Maroone, Jr., with the rifle aforesaid did willfully, unlawfully and fel-oniously resist the execution of legal process upon himself by the said Don Graves and did willfully, unlawfully and felon-iously shoot and wound the said Don Graves while the said Don Graves was lawfully and in the discharge of his official duties attempting to arrest the said Joe Maroone, Jr., contrary .
The statute before us, Mississippi Code Annotated section 97-3-7 (1972), specified a number of crimes; the part of the statute under which Maroone was indicted is:
Every person who shall be convicted of any assault or assault and battery upon another with any deadly weapons or other means or force likely to produce death, . in resisting . any officer . . . lawfully attempting to arrest him . . . shall be imprisoned in the penitentiary not more than ten years, .
As we have held before, the purpose in enacting the statute was to make using a deadly weapon while resisting an arrest a felony. "The evil" which the legislature sought to curb by passing the statute is not the same as that involved in cases of assault with intent to kill and murder. Macon v. State, 295 So.2d 742 (Miss.1974). Though the indictment before us is not the most artfully drawn, we think it complies with the statute, and adequately advised the appellant of the nature of the charge against him. It is our opinion that the acts charged against appellant in the indictment are not separate and distinct offenses but in reality constitute ingredients of' one principal offense. If it can be said that the indictment describes more than one act, such acts are incidental to the principal offense, and relate to a description of and are not inconsistent with the principal offense. Said another way, each action of the appellant described in the indictment is but a part of a single episode, that is, resisting arrest.
II.
Argument is made on behalf of Maroone that the verdict of the jury was against the overwhelming weight of the evidence but we find no merit in this contention. This question is not properly before us because the appellant made no motion for a new trial, which is a prerequisite to raising such a point on appeal. Neves v. State, 268 So.2d 890 (Miss.1972); Colson v. Sims, 220 So.2d 345 (Miss.1969). However, perusal of the record shows that the jury had before it conflicting versions of what happened and we cannot say that its finding was not justified by the evidence.
III.
Other errors are assigned with reference to the granting and refusing of different instructions but we find that the jury was adequately instructed on the elements of the charge, the state's burden of proof, and the applicable law. When the totality of the jury instructions given to the jury is considered as a whole, we cannot say that the jury was misled by the granting of any or all of the instructions. Myrick v. State, 290 So.2d 259 (Miss.1974).
What started as a painful but relatively insignificant event — the spilling of a cup of coffee on a child — terminated in what obviously was considered by the jury and the trial judge to be a serious violation of our law against resisting arrest. When a citizen arms himself with a deadly weapon (a rifle), cocks it, declares that he will not be brought to jail upon a warrant, and then, with his finger on the trigger, points, and aims the rifle at and shoots an arresting officer, he places himself within the category of persons subject to the penalties prescribed by the legislature in section 97-3-7, supra. Such were the actions of appellant, who received a fair trial, and accordingly the judgment appealed from must be allowed to stand.
The case was considered by a conference of the Judges en banc.
Affirmed.
GILLESPIE, C. J., and INZER, ROBERTSON, SUGG and WALKER, JJ., concur.
PATTERSON, J., dissents, and RODGERS, P. J., and SMITH, J., join.