Case ID: ark_34/html/0447-01.html
Source: Caselaw Access Project
Author: {"author": "Eakin, J.", "license": "Public Domain", "url": "https://static.case.law/"}
Date Created: 2024-08-24T03:29:51.129683

Blahut vs. The State.
    1. Sabbath-Breaking : Keeping open saloon on Sunday.
    
    Appellant was a nominal partner in a saloon, and he and another bar-tender attended by turns on Sundays to furnish liquor to customers entering at the back door; the front door being kept closed. Held guilty of the offense of Sabbath-breaking by keeping open a dram-shop on Sunday.
    APPEAL from Garland Circuit Court.
    Hon. J. M. Smith, Circuit Judge.
    Henderson, Attorney General, for appellee.
   Eakin, J.

Appellant, William Blahut, was indicted, together with J. Blahut, for Sabbath-breaking by keeping open a dram-shop on Sunday. They severed. William Blahut was tried by a jury, convicted, fined, denied a new trial, and then appealed, on the ground that the evidence did not support the verdict.

It tended to show that appellant was a nominal partner in a saloon, and one of the bar-tenders. For a year before the indictment it had been the habit to close the front door of the saloon on Sunday, and leave unfastened a back door, through which persons might, and did, come to buy drinks. Appellant and another bar-tender attended by turns on Sunday to furnish the liquor.

This, if true, constituted the offense of keeping open a dram-shop. The jury were proper judges of the weight of the evidence.

Affirm.