Drummer v. Mississippi
Annotate this CaseA jury convicted Vance Drummer of two counts of grand larceny and one count of attempted grand larceny in 2012. The trial court granted the State’s request for a flight instruction because Drummer, after absconding with the stolen goods, fled from police when they attempted to pull him over after he had run a stop sign in Mathiston. The trial court sentenced Drummer as an habitual offender pursuant to Mississippi Code Section 99-19-81. One of the felony convictions the State used to prove Drummer’s status as an habitual offender was the felony-fleeing conviction to which he pled guilty as a result of his flight from police in Mathiston. The Supreme Court found that the trial court erred when it sentenced Drummer as an habitual offender: "Drummer’s flight from police arose from the same nucleus of operative facts as the larcenies for which he was convicted and therefore should not have been used as a predicate felony pursuant to Section 99-19-81." Accordingly, Drummer’s sentence as an habitual offender was vacated, and ad the case remanded to the trial court for resentencing of Drummer as a nonhabitual offender.
Some case metadata and case summaries were written with the help of AI, which can produce inaccuracies. You should read the full case before relying on it for legal research purposes.
This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.