Case ID: ga_90/html/0102-01.html
Source: Caselaw Access Project
Author: {"author": "", "license": "Public Domain", "url": "https://static.case.law/"}
Date Created: 2024-08-24T03:29:51.129683

Rutland v. The State.
    1. Construing the whole charge of the court together, there was no error in the parts of the same excepted to. On the effect of unexplained possession of stolen goods, the burglary and the stealing of the goods from the building being otherwise established, the charge conforms in substance to ilangham v. Slate, 87 Qa. 549, and cases therein cited.
    2. The evidence not being briefed or condensed as required by law, its sufficiency to warrant the verdict is assumed.
    August 1, 1892.
    Crimina] law. Burglary. Charge of court. Before Judge Miller. Bibb superior court. November term, 1891.
    After conviction of burglary, the defendant excepted to the overruling of his motion for a new trial. This motion contains the usual grounds that the verdict was contrary to law and evidence, and assigns error upon the following parts of the charge of the court:
    “In a case of burglary, where the offence of burglary has been established and certain goods stolen, the possession of those goods shortly after the burglary in the hands of the defendant and not explained by him to the satisfaction of the jury, is a fact from which you are authorized to infer his guilt.
    “ The State claims that Jones is the only man raising this' sort of cotton around there, green seed cotton of a particular description. The defendant replies that is not true, that a near neighbor of this man Jones, whose name is included in the indictment, Gracy, and himself also, planted cotton with green seed, and the cotton they carried to Clays’ gin was green seed cotton raised by them on their own land, or land that they were farming on ; so you see it makes a question for the jury.
    “ The State does not claim in this case to have introduced testimony, what the law calls positive testimony, on the question of this man’s guilt; they have not put up a man who swore, defendant is the man, he confessed it, or who saw him take the cotton. The State asks for a conviction on circumstantial evidence alone. A fact can be proven by circumstances as well and as satisfactory as by any other sort of evidence, provided it is strong enough.”
   Judgment affirmed..

J. R. Cooper, for plaintiff in error.

W. H. Felton, Jr., solicitor-general, contra.