Case ID: ga-app_24/html/0144-02.html
Source: Caselaw Access Project
Author: {"author": "\n      Broyles, P. J.", "license": "Public Domain", "url": "https://static.case.law/"}
Date Created: 2024-08-24T03:29:51.129683

10603.
    Howard v. The State.
    Decided July 23, 1919.
    Indictment for burglary; from Whitñeld superior court—Judge Tarver. May 5,1919.
    Howard ivas convicted of burglary, under an indictment which charged him with having broken and entered the store-house of Wood So McDonald and stolen certain articles therefrom. The testimony relied on to show a breaking and entering of the storehouse was that of McDonald, one of the proprietors of the store. He testified: “I closed up that night. I locked up as usual. There are two doors to the store. I barred the back door with a crossbar. There ivas a glass front to the store. There was one rear window. It had bars across it, and ivas fastened down lower. It had iron bars on the inside. One could have broken the glass in the front door and reached in and unlocked the lock. The front door was a glass door. There was a Yale lock on that front door,— had a thumb screw in it.” “That store was burned about two o’clock in the morning.. It was some time aiter two when they woke me up. . . When I got down there the house was practically burned up; it was all fell in and in flames all over.” Certain articles found in and near the defendant’s home, of the kind described'in the indictment, were identified by the witness as articles from the stock of goods in the store-house. It was testified that the article found in the defendant’s house had been found by his son under the corner of a store-house near the burned store-house “about daylight” in the morning after the fire, and brought to his house without his knowledge. Counsel for the defendant contended that a breaking and entering had not been shown by the evidence, and in their brief in this court cited Lester v. State, 106 Ga. 371.
   Broyles, P. J.

In this case the record discloses no evidence which authorized the defendant’s conviction of the offense of burglary, and the court erred in overruling the motion for a new trial.

Judgment reversed.

Bloodworth and Stephens, JJ., concur.

IF. F. Mann, Gordon Mann, George G. Glenn, Ralph II. Mouse, for plaintiff in error.

J. M. Lang, solicitor-general, contra.