Fitts v. State

The plaintiff in error, Sam Fitts, was convicted by a jury in the Circuit Court of Sumner County of the murder of one John Perry, and sentenced to the State prison for a term of fifteen years. The prisoner has appealed in error.

It appears from the record that on a former trial the prisoner was convicted of murder in the second degree, and his term of imprisonment fixed at twenty-one yea'rs in the penitentiary. The maximum punishment for murder in the second degree being fixed by statute at twenty years imprisonment, the verdict of the jury fixing the punishment at twenty-one years ' was a…