Opinion ID: 1936088
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 4

Heading: circumstantial instruction

Text: Circumstantial evidence instructions which have been approved by this Court instruct the jury that it must not only find the accused guilty beyond a reasonable doubt, but it must also find the accused guilty to the exclusion of every reasonable hypothesis other than guilt. Stringfellow v. State, 595 So.2d 1320, 1322 (Miss. 1992). The Court in Stringfellow declined to abolish the requirement of the language of the circumstantial evidence instruction although recognizing that the beyond a reasonable doubt standard is no less stringent. Taylor claims the trial court committed reversible error when it denied two circumstantial evidence instructions, citing Simpson v. State, 553 So.2d 37 (Miss. 1989). Simpson held that circumstantial evidence instructions are required when the prosecution is without a confession and without eyewitnesses to the gravamen of the offense charged. Id. at 39. In the present case, Taylor confessed to Josephine Magee that he killed his stepdaughter. That confession takes the case out of a circumstantial context. In Mack v. State, 481 So.2d 793 (Miss. 1985), this Court held that an admission by a defendant to his girlfriend of an alleged burglary was a confession, and constituted direct evidence of the crime such that giving a circumstantial evidence instruction was not required. Id. at 795. See also Anderson v. State, 246 Miss. 821, 828, 152 So.2d 702 (1963). Taylor's alleged confession to Josephine Magee makes a circumstantial evidence instruction inapplicable.