Opinion ID: 1621727
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 17

Heading: whether the trial court erred in admitting numerous gruesome photographs and a number of autopsy photographs

Text: ¶ 56. Watts next asserts that the circuit court erred in denying his motion to suppress inflammatory photographs and admitting into evidence photographs of the victim, including autopsy pictures, some of which were enlarged from a standard 6 × 8 size to 20 × 30. While he makes specific allegations only about the inflammatory nature of a picture of the dead child lying crammed into the fork of a tree root on a creek bank and the gruesomeness of the autopsy pictures, Watts appears to argue that the trial court erred in overruling his objections to photographs of the victim's body, her wrist, her left arm, her upper body, and autopsy pictures of her throat and heart. The circuit court passed on Watts' objections to photographs of the child's genital area until trial, where the exhibit in question was allowed into evidence. ¶ 57. [T]he admissibility of photographs rests within the sound discretion of the trial judge, whose decision will be upheld absent abuse of that discretion... Yet, photographs which are gruesome or inflammatory and lack an evidentiary purpose are always inadmissible as evidence. McFee v. State, 511 So.2d 130, 134 (Miss.1987). In light of McFee and M.R.E. 403, [7] a court, when considering admissibility, must also consider (1) whether the proof is absolute or in doubt as to identity of the guilty party, and (2) whether the photographs are necessary evidence or simply a ploy on the part of the prosecutor to arouse the passion and prejudice of the jury. McNeal v. State, 551 So.2d 151, 159 (Miss.1989)(finding that gruesome photographs of a maggot-infested body were devoid of any evidentiary purpose). See also Williams v. State, 544 So.2d 782, 785 (Miss.1987) ([G]enerally the admissibility of [photos] is within the sound discretion of the trial judge and the admission is proper, so long as their introduction serves some useful evidentiary purpose.... Abuse of discretion is sometimes explained to be admission of [photos] when a killing is not contradicted or denied or the corpus delicti and the identity of the deceased have been established.). ¶ 58. While there is nothing pleasant about these pictures, they are neither gruesome nor inflammatory, nor are they overdramatized by their enlargement; Absent enlargement, much of the relevant detail would not be easily discernible. All of the photographs complained of have significant evidentiary value, whose probative value was increased by enlargement. The circuit court did not abuse his discretion in admitting any of the pictures.