Case ID: ga_95/html/0456-01.html
Source: Caselaw Access Project
Author: {"author": "", "license": "Public Domain", "url": "https://static.case.law/"}
Date Created: 2024-08-24T03:29:51.129683

Young et al. v. The State.
    Bleckley, C. J. — 1. It has been so repeatedly ruled that assignments’of error in admitting evidence cannot be considered when it does not appear what objection was made to the evidence at the time it was offered in the trial court, that the practice on this question ought to be considered as finally settled.
    2. In charging the jury upon the law with reference to the possession of stolen property by one accused of the theft, the court should use the word “recent,” but the omission to do so is not-cause for a new trial in a particular case where it affirmatively appears that the possession in question was in fact a recent one.
    3. Although the conviction was founded solely on circumstantial evidence, it is not cause for a new trial that the court, while instructing the j ury as to the law of reasonable doubt, omitted to state in the-same connection that the evidence must also exclude every other-reasonable hypothesis but that of the guilt of the accused, the court having subsequently charged as follows: “In connection with indirect or circumstantial evidence the court charges you that the rule of law is, that the facts established by the evidence must not only be consistent with the defendant’s guilt, but must exclude every other reasonable hypothesis.”
    4. Under the facts of this case, and in view of the rulings in Jones v. The State, 67 Ga. 242, and Green v. The State, 71 Ga. 487, it is not-cause for a new trial that the court charged: “Circumstances satisfactorily proven which point to the guilt of the defendants, and which are irreconcilable with the hypothesis of their innocence,, and which require explanation from them and may be explained by them if they be innocent, but which are not so explained, are sufficient to satisfy the conscience of a juror and justify him before that forum for rendering a verdict according to their almost unerring indication.” See also Everett v. The State, 62 Ga. 65, text of opinion on page 72.
    5. There was no error in refusing to give the following request to-charge: “Where two or more persons reside in a house, the fact of stolen goods being found in the house is not evidence of the guilt of any one of the persons residing in the same; the possession must be traced to one or more of them specialty.”
    6. There was sufficient evidence to warrant the jury in convicting the accused, and the trial court did not abuse its discretion in refusing to grant a new trial.
    October 15, 1894.
    Indictment for cattle stealing. Before Judge Sweat. Camden superior court. March term, 1894.
    George W. Owens, for plaintiff in error.
    
      W. G. Brantley, solicitor-general, by Harrison &■ Peeples, contra.
    
   Judgment affirmed.