Opinion ID: 1088560
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 8

Heading: the court erred in permitting the introduction of full color photographs of the victim and of the murder weapon as neither had any probative value but served only to inflame and prejudice the jury.

Text: The admissibility of photographs rests within the sound discretion of the trial judge and, so long as the photographs have some evidentiary value, the trial judge will not have abused that discretion despite the gruesome nature of the photographs. Sharp v. State, 446 So.2d 1008 (Miss. 1984); Ashley v. State, 423 So.2d 1311, 1316 (Miss. 1982); Shearer v. State, 423 So.2d 824 (Miss. 1982); May v. State, 199 So.2d 635, 640 (Miss. 1967). Evidentiary value can be found in describing the circumstances of the killing and the corpus delicti, Williams v. State, 354 So.2d 266 (Miss. 1978), in describing the location of the body and the cause of death, Ashley v. State, supra , and in supplementing or adding clarity to the testimony of the witness, Hughes v. State, 401 So.2d 1100 (Miss. 1981). When the photographs complained of were introduced into this record, the corpus delicti had not been conclusively established and the photographs had further evidentiary value in that they served to supplement and add clarity to the testimony of George Hebbler, among the first to discover the victims, as he related the circumstances of the killing and the location of the body. Therefore, appellant's eighth assignment of error is without merit.