Ex Parte Hamilton

Petitioner, Joel Knox Hamilton, was convicted of assault and battery in the Circuit Court of Jefferson County. He was fined twenty-five dollars and was sentenced to one hundred twenty days' hard labor. The Court of Criminal Appeals affirmed,396 So.2d 120, the conviction and sentence. This Court granted certiorari to determine whether an erroneous jury instruction was cured by a subsequent instruction in the oral charges. We hold that it was not.

The Court of Criminal Appeals found that the trial judge's subsequent oral charge instructing the jury to consider "all the evidence"1 cured the…