Barnes v. State

Hunt, Justice.

Bill Barnes was convicted by a jury of the murder of Michael Herring and sentenced to life imprisonment. He appeals, enumerating as error the trial court’s denial of his motion for a directed verdict, the admission of his statements into evidence, and the trial court’s failure to charge the jury on the state’s burden of proving the corpus delicti.

The defendant, nineteen years old, and his uncle, the victim, twenty-one years old, had been reared together by the defendant’s mother. The evening before the murder, the two men had driven around with various friends, drinking and…