2. Background and Procedural History
The encounter and shooting
On May 10, 2022, Jaylan Bynum awoke in her sister Brianna Bynum’s residence in Woodville, Mississippi, and found Jaccory Carr standing in the bedroom. Jaylan had known Carr since childhood and recognized him immediately. She described his behavior that day as unusually nervous and troubling and later saw him carrying a firearm.
Brianna returned to the residence with her two-year-old child and a friend, Kayla. According to Brianna, Carr possessed multiple firearms, directed them inside, asked about the police, and threatened to shoot Kayla because he thought she was behaving suspiciously. Both sisters testified that they feared him. After the group eventually left, Brianna encountered officers assembling nearby and reported that Carr remained inside with several firearms.
Chief Joseph Daughtry and members of the Natchez Police Department’s SWAT team responded. Daughtry testified that Carr emerged from the rear of the residence and fired two shots toward law enforcement. Chief Lemuel Rutledge similarly described a man emerging, making eye contact with him, and firing two shots in his direction. Rutledge returned fire. Although he initially thought a bullet had struck him, officers determined that he had been hit by debris from a wooden post struck by gunfire.
Carr fled into nearby woods and was apprehended approximately one week later.
Conviction and appellate issues
A Wilkinson County jury convicted Carr of aggravated assault on a law-enforcement officer under Mississippi Code Section 97-3-7. The circuit court sentenced him to thirty years in the custody of the Mississippi Department of Corrections.
Through counsel, Carr presented two principal appellate claims:
- The jury had not been properly instructed on the offense’s essential elements, violating his right to a jury trial.
- The verdict was contrary to the overwhelming weight of the evidence because no physical or forensic evidence connected him to the shooting.
Carr also submitted pro se supplemental filings. The Court identified untimeliness and substantial briefing defects and invoked the rule that unsupported claims need not be considered on appeal.
4. Analysis
A. Precedents Cited and Their Influence
Reynolds v. Allied Emergency Services, PC, 193 So. 3d 625, 631 (Miss. 2016)
Carr relied on this decision, in which the Court found reversible error because the jury received an incorrect instruction. The decisive distinction was between an instructional defect established by the record and a document missing from the record.
In Carr’s case, the trial judge identified a problem with the State’s proposed instruction, required revision, and then read the revised formulation to the jury. The supplemental transcript established the content actually delivered. Consequently, the principle that an incorrect instruction can require reversal did not establish that reversal was necessary here.
Harrell v. State, 134 So. 3d 266, 269–75 (Miss. 2014)
In Harrell v. State, the jury was not instructed on the elements of the underlying felony of robbery. The Court treated that actual failure to provide essential elements as reversible error.
The present opinion distinguished that substantive omission from the absence of a written instruction in an appellate file. Because the supplemental transcript showed that Carr’s jury heard every essential element, the defect identified in Harrell v. State was not present.
The distinction preserves the importance of complete jury instructions: the Court did not excuse a proven omission of an element. It found that no such omission had occurred.
Little v. State, 233 So. 3d 288, 289 (Miss. 2017)
This decision supplied the governing standard for Carr’s challenge to the weight of the evidence. A reviewing court views the evidence in the light most favorable to the verdict and intervenes only when allowing the verdict to stand would sanction an “unconscionable injustice.”
Its importance lies in the allocation of responsibility between trial and appellate courts. The Supreme Court does not independently reweigh testimony, decide which witnesses deserve belief, or resolve factual disputes anew. That restrained standard prevented Carr’s preference for forensic corroboration from becoming a basis for an appellate retrial of credibility.
Brown v. State, 130 So. 3d 1074, 1082 (Miss. 2013), quoting Graham v. State, 812 So. 2d 1150, 1153 (Miss. Ct. App. 2002)
These authorities supported the proposition that a conviction may rest solely on credible testimonial evidence. Their role was direct: they answered Carr’s contention that the prosecution’s failure to produce physical or forensic evidence undermined the verdict.
The opinion cites Graham v. State through Brown v. State; it does not separately analyze the facts of either case. Their cited principle establishes that forensic corroboration is not a categorical prerequisite to conviction. It does not mean that all testimony must be accepted or that evidentiary weaknesses can never justify relief.
Butler v. State, 102 So. 3d 260, 269–70 (Miss. 2012)
This case reinforced the jury’s responsibility to assess credibility and resolve conflicts in testimony. Together with Little v. State, it explained why the Supreme Court would not substitute its own assessment for the jury’s acceptance of the officers’ accounts.
The combined reasoning is that testimonial evidence is legally capable of supporting a conviction, while the jury ordinarily determines its persuasive force.
Graves v. State, 216 So. 3d 1152, 1162 (Miss. 2016)
Cited in the footnote addressing Carr’s pro se submissions, this decision supported the rule that failure to cite legal authority for an asserted error results in the Court declining to consider that claim.
This precedent did not determine the merits of the two counseled issues. Instead, it explained the procedural limits on additional arguments submitted without the required legal and record support.
B. The Statutory Elements and the Revised Instruction
Mississippi Code Section 97-3-7(2)(a) provides, in relevant part, that aggravated assault includes attempting to cause bodily injury to another with a deadly weapon or other means likely to produce death or serious bodily harm. Section 97-3-7(14)(a) identifies assault upon a law-enforcement officer acting within the scope of duty as an aggravating circumstance for charging.
The instruction recorded in the supplemental transcript required the jury to find beyond a reasonable doubt that Carr:
- Committed the charged conduct on or about May 10, 2022, in Wilkinson County;
- Unlawfully attempted to cause bodily injury to Chief Rutledge with a deadly weapon;
- Did so by shooting at him with a firearm; and
- Acted while Rutledge was performing duties as a law-enforcement officer.
The Court concluded that this formulation included each essential element of the charged offense. Because the prosecution proceeded on an attempt theory, the absence of a bullet wound did not itself defeat the charge. The relevant allegation was an unlawful attempt to cause injury by firing at the officer.
The State’s original proposal also required a finding that Carr “knew” Rutledge was acting within the scope of his duties. Carr objected to that language, arguing that the State had not shown that he identified Rutledge. The trial court directed revision, and the instruction ultimately read omitted that separate knowledge requirement.
The Supreme Court accepted the revised instruction as tracking the statute. This supports the narrower conclusion that the additional knowledge-of-duty clause was not an essential element under the provisions the Court applied. It should not be expanded into a holding that assault requires no culpable mental state: the operative instruction still required an unlawful attempt to cause bodily injury.
C. Missing Documentation Versus Missing Instructions
The central issue arose because the revised written instruction was absent from the original appellate record. The State sought supplementation, but the supplemental materials still did not contain the physical instruction. They instead included a transcript recording its oral delivery.
Carr argued that this established only what the judge said, not that a written instruction accompanied the jury during deliberations. He relied on Mississippi Rule of Criminal Procedure 22(e), which requires the court, before closing argument, to rule on requested instructions, mark them “given” or “refused,” and make them part of the record.
The Court distinguished two questions:
- What did the jury hear? The transcript affirmatively established a complete elements instruction.
- What did the missing paper prove? Its absence did not affirmatively establish that the trial court failed to mark or provide it.
That distinction defeated Carr’s proposed inference. An inability to locate an instruction after trial is not necessarily evidence that the instruction was withheld during trial. The Court found neither an affirmative showing of Rule 22 noncompliance nor demonstrated prejudice.
The holding is therefore limited. It does not authorize trial courts to disregard written-instruction requirements, and it does not establish that oral delivery invariably cures every procedural defect. Nor does the Court decide that a proven failure to instruct on an essential element would be harmless. The holding addresses a missing appellate document where other record evidence establishes complete instruction and no actual procedural failure or prejudice is shown.
D. The Weight-of-the-Evidence Challenge
Carr’s second argument focused on the absence of physical and forensic evidence. The Court rejected the premise that such corroboration was necessary in this case.
Chief Daughtry and Chief Rutledge testified that Carr fired toward law-enforcement officers. Their accounts provided direct testimonial support for the charged shooting. The jury was entitled to assess those accounts, consider any conflicts, and determine their credibility.
The surrounding testimony also placed Carr, armed, inside the residence before the confrontation. Nevertheless, the Court’s express basis for rejecting the weight challenge was the substantial eyewitness evidence of the shooting itself.
This was a weight-of-the-evidence decision, not a separately developed ruling on a legal-sufficiency challenge. The question was whether the verdict was so contrary to the evidence that affirmance would produce an unconscionable injustice. Applying the required deference, the Court found that it was not.
E. The Pro Se Briefing Issues
The Court identified several defects in Carr’s additional filings. They were untimely under Mississippi Rule of Appellate Procedure 31, did not satisfy Rule 28(b), and included a reply filed without the leave required by Rule 28(d).
Rule 28(b) permits supplemental pro se arguments concerning record-based issues not raised by counsel, but requires compliance with specified briefing provisions. Carr’s first two filings omitted numerous required components and supplied neither supporting legal authority nor record citations.
The footnote illustrates that the opportunity to supplement counsel’s arguments does not dispense with appellate procedure. The Court’s treatment of those submissions was procedural; it did not constitute a merits adjudication of unspecified additional claims.