Opinion ID: 1706950
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 6

Heading: bell's informant/accomplice instruction dg-14

Text: ¶ 25. This instruction reads: The Court instructs the jury that the law looks with suspicion and distrust on the testimony of an alleged informant, and requires the jury to weigh same with great care and caution and suspicion. You should weigh the testimony from alleged informant, Robert James, and passing on what weight, if any, you should give this testimony, you should weigh it with great care and caution, and look upon it with distrust and suspicion. ¶ 26. Bell asserts that the refusal of this instruction is error because James was present at the scene and possibly participated; he was an informer who had incentive to lie or the police might charge him with capital murder; and his trial testimony differed from a previous statement and from that of Frank Coffey, who was charged as an accomplice. ¶ 27. He relies on Ferrill v. State, 643 So.2d 501 (Miss.1994), and McGee v. State, 608 So.2d 1129 (Miss.1992), in which we found reversible error where the trial court refused an instruction on effect of impeachment of witness by his own prior inconsistent statement. But here, no significant prior inconsistent statement by James is called to our attention, nor do we find one. It is true that Frank Coffey had given a statement inconsistent with that of James, but this instruction does not address such an event. Bell suggests that James's pre-trial statement that one of the guns used had black tape on its grip and his courtroom testimony describing the tape as gray is an inconsistency sufficient to justify a cautionary instruction. We do not consider such natural variations in repeated descriptions to be inconsistencies sufficient to justify a cautionary instruction beyond those general instructions given. ¶ 28. Ferrill was also reversed on the failure of the trial judge to grant an accomplice cautionary instruction. However, James, in the case sub judice, was not charged as an accomplice, nor was there any evidence offered that he should have been so charged.