Isaiah Jerome Gunn v. State of Mississippi

Summary

The Mississippi Supreme Court affirmed Gunn's convictions for first-degree murder, attempted murder, aggravated assault, and shooting into a dwelling. It held that the deliberate-design instruction permissibly allowed, but did not require, the jury to infer deliberate design from Gunn's intentional use of a deadly weapon, and that the self-defense claim presented a weight-of-the-evidence question that the verdict survived. The court concluded that the evidence, viewed favorably to the verdict, supported the jury's rejection of self-defense.