Case ID: ga-app_28/html/0552-01.html
Source: Caselaw Access Project
Author: {"author": "\n      Broyles, C. J.", "license": "Public Domain", "url": "https://static.case.law/"}
Date Created: 2024-08-24T03:29:51.129683

13378.
    Williams v. The State.
    Decided May 9, 1922.
    Indictment for larceny of hog; from Emanuel superior court — Judge Hardeman. January 23, 1921.
    From the evidence it appeared -that the hog alleged to have, been stolen — described as an unmarked red castrated male hog weighing about 125 pounds — disappeared from a fenced lot of the owner, H. L. Johnson, about September 16, 1921. He testified that he “ never did find this hog.” John Smith testified: that on Friday, September 16, when he was stripping cane for Mr. Johnson about 400 yards from the field in which Mr. Johnson kept his hogs, he (the witness) heard a'gun fire, and, about a half hour later, saw Eobert Williams, the defendant, going towards his own house with something in a sack — a big bundle — under his arm; and that on the following Sunday morning the defendant invited him to breakfast and had fried pork in a little dish on the table, and told him to eat it and shut his mouth. The witness added: “Then he asked me, . . ‘How come you don’t get you no pork ? ’ And I says/ ‘ I am scared;’ and so I kept on listening to him, and after a while I went on and got me one, and I got caught. He called it a grunt; he asked me why I didn’t get me a grunt. . . He did not say where he got this grunt that I was eating that morning; he didn’t say anything about that red hog of Mr. Johnson’s; . . he said he killed him one. . . I think he owned a sow and three shoats. . . Eobert also told me who was with him in getting these grunts,— his brother in law, Haywood Jordan. He did not say whether Haywood Jordan had anything to do with getting this particular grunt. . . He didn’t say he stole him a grunt. I have seen that sow and three shoats of Eobert since that shot was fired.” H. L. Johnson, recalled, testified: “ Since this hog was missed I have made a search around my neighborhood there for this hog, and the best evidence I could find was about 150 yards from where this shooting should have occurred, for him to have got the hog out of my field. About 150 yards from the swamp I found the skull of a hog, the head and his jawbones, and a piece of the skin, about the- size of your hand, with red hair and all. . . There was no other part or parcel of the hog’s carcass there. . . I couldn’t say positively how old a head and skull that was. . . I couldn’t tell whether that was .my hog or not.” The witness stated that he knew “ this man’s sow and pigs,” and they were still there, and the man had not owned any others since he had been on the place of the witness. The defendant, in his statement at the trial, said that he knew nothing about this hog, and had no meat at breakfast “that Sunday morning,” except some bacon that he had bought, and that the witness who swore against him did so because of ill feeling, and had made threats against him before that time.
   Broyles, C. J.

The evidence did not authorize the defendant’s conviction of the offense charged, and the court erred in overruling the motion for a new trial. Judgment reversed.

Luke and Bloodworth, JJ., concur.

B. H. Humphrey, Arthur W. Jordan, for plaintiff

in error, cited: 119 Ga. 118; 97 Ga. 209; 74 Ga. 840; 12 Ga. App. 551; 17 Ga. App. 295; Id. 728 (1), and cit.; 5 Ga. App. 228; 12 Ga. App. 363; 34 Ga. 342; 17 Ga. App. 820.

Walter F. Grey, solicitor-general, contra.