Opinion ID: 1936088
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 7

Heading: sufficiency of the evidence

Text: When reviewing a challenge to the sufficiency of the evidence, this Court considers all of the evidence in the light most consistent with the verdict, giving the State the benefit of all inferences favorable to the verdict. When the evidence before the jury is such that reasonable jurors could have found the defendant guilty, the verdict is beyond the Court's authority to disturb. McFee v. State, 511 So.2d 130, 133-34 (Miss. 1987). The jury was instructed that, to find Taylor guilty of capital murder, it must find beyond a reasonable doubt that: (1) Taylor was under sentence of life imprisonment, and (2) Taylor, without authority of law and not in reasonable self-defense, murdered Mildred Spires. Taylor contends that because the witnesses who testified that he had made incriminating statements to them were unsavory strangers, their testimony is unreliable, unbelievable, and constituted insufficient evidence on which to base a conviction. He specifically points to the fact that Stanley Evans was an ex-convict with prior convictions for house burglary and grand larceny who admitted that he was a police informant. The evidence in this case, if believed by the jury, is sufficient to support a conviction without eyewitnesses to the crime or physical evidence linking Taylor to the crime. The testimony of the witnesses showed that Taylor was angry with his wife and planned to get her by harming one of her children. On July 11, 1987, Taylor had two angry confrontations with Edith Taylor and within an hour or so of the last of these confrontations, he telephoned Mildred Spires. Taylor had no alibi from about 5:00 p.m. until 7:00 p.m. when he telephoned his girlfriend. Taylor gave conflicting accounts of the scratches on his face and body and none of the accounts could be verified. His girlfriend told police that Taylor had asked her to lie and say that she had scratched him. Shortly after he was questioned, Taylor asked a friend to find a prostitute whom he could pay to say she had scratched him. About a month later, he told another friend that he had killed Mildred Spires. Mildred's decomposed body was found in her own automobile on September 1, 1987. The jury, having heard all of the witnesses who were thoroughly cross-examined and giving their testimony weight, could reasonably have reached a guilty verdict.