State of West Virginia v. Cain

Summary

The West Virginia Supreme Court reversed a second-degree murder conviction, holding that the trial court erred in admitting a co-conspirator's declarations without a prima facie showing of conspiracy, in modifying a self-defense instruction to substitute a 'reasonable man of ordinary intelligence and courage' standard for the defendant's own standpoint, in giving a flawed ex mero motu instruction on homicide classifications, and in giving a State instruction on self-defense that omitted the defendant's reasonable-belief requirement. The court also held that a prosecutor need not call every witness named on the indictment, that hearing foundation evidence for dying declarations before the jury is not error, and that juries may not take depositions to their room under Code ch. 131 § 12.