Opinion ID: 1106169
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 15

Heading: the court allowed impermissible emotions to be displayed during the testimony of the victim's daughter.

Text: Tessie Barnes, the daughter of the victim, Jeanette Holden, was the individual who discovered the bodies of the victims when she came back to pick up Mrs. Holden for the purpose of attending a jewelry auction. Her testimony related to the scene and conditions surrounding it and was relevant to the presentation of the State's case. On direct examination of Tessie Barnes, she began to weep and the court recessed in order to allow her time to regain her composure before continuing her testimony. Ladner contends that her display of emotion was prejudicial and that the lower court should have declared a mistrial. Rushing v. Butler, 868 F.2d 800 (5th Cir.1989), is distinguishable from the case at bar and lends no support to that contention. In Rushing, the prosecutor, in a sentencing hearing, called family members to testify to the victim's good personal qualities and to the emotional distress they were experiencing as a result of the crime. In the case at bar, the testimony of Tessie Barnes was elicited not as a family impact statement but to prove the conditions at the crime scene. Evans v. State, 422 So.2d 737, 743 (Miss. 1982), involved a capital case in which the victim's mother and brother sobbed, cried and were emotional on the witness stand while in the process of giving relevant and probative evidence. This Court found no reversible error in the jury's having seen and heard the family members' distress. The trial judge is in a better position to assess the effect of such an incident than is this Court on appeal, and this Court will not reverse on the failure to grant a mistrial unless the trial judge abused his discretion in overruling the motion for a mistrial. Horne v. State, 487 So.2d 213, 214-15 (Miss. 1986). The lower court in the present case did not abuse its discretion in declining to grant a mistrial or a new trial.