While researching Mississippi gambling law, I re-encountered the old Mississippi Supreme Court opinion in Stubbs v. State, 40 So. 2d 256, 258 (Miss. 1949). It remains as amusing today as when I first read it some 45 years ago. More importantly, it is still good law, still being cited today, and enjoys tangential application to the issues presented by the current DCC quandry:
"R.D. Stubbs and twelve other Negroes, appellants here, were convicted in a justice of the peace court upon a charge of engaging in a game of chance, namely, gambling, for money, by shooting dice. Upon appeal to the circuit court they were again convicted and have appealed to this Court.
The locus delicti was in a verdant pine grove, typical of South Mississippi, a short distance from old state highway No. 13, — a significant number since there were thirteen defendants there assembled; recalling the traditional superstition, confined not alone to the Negro Race, this ill omen should have warned of impending disaster. The time was a tranquil Sunday afternoon in the sultry month of August.
A diligent constable, intent upon upholding the peace and dignity of the State of Mississippi, having learned of this assemblage and being dubious of his ability to cope with the number involved, called upon and "deputized" four other people to accompany him to the scene. They approached the unwary and hapless appellants and discerned that they were huddled in a manner similar to that of the players in our popular collegiate game of football but there is no evidence of the presence of the proverbial pigskin. Some of the appellants were in a circle instead of the single wing formation of the gridiron, and were apparently in approximately that position assumed by the linemen when ready for the snap-back; others of the appellants were behind these linemen in what we judge to be the double wing formation of the backfield. The appellant, Tom Newsome, was calling the signals and carrying the ball; at the moment the play was interrupted he was calling for a six and was rolling something out upon the ground which one of the witnesses identified as dice, though no such instrumentality of popular pastime was ever found by the raiders.
There was money upon the ground in front of some of the appellants but not all of them, and those who possessed the coin of the realm thus lavishly displayed were not identified so as to separate them from those who were mere interested spectators. Upon discovery of the presence of "the law" the formation broke into a running match, but two skyward shots from the constable's gun brought to a halt all of the players save the fleet-footed appellant, R.D. Stubbs, who had apparently seized the ball from the mass of scrimmage and sprinted over the hill as if running for a touchdown; he did not return for an attempt to convert for the extra point, but was subsequently apprehended. These, in brief, are the facts disclosed by the postgame cinema."
The full opinion can be found here:
Read Stubbs v. State, 206 Miss. 485, see flags on bad law, and search Casetext’s comprehensive legal database
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