Case ID: ga-app_34/html/0238-03.html
Source: Caselaw Access Project
Author: {"author": "Bboyles, 'C. J.", "license": "Public Domain", "url": "https://static.case.law/"}
Date Created: 2024-08-24T03:29:51.129683

16632.
    Williams v. The State.
    Decided July 28, 1925.
    Accusation of possessing intoxicating liquor; from city court of Wrightsville—Judge Blount. June 18, 1925.
   Bboyles, 'C. J.

The evidence was insufficient to support the verdict, and the court erred in overruling the motion for a new trial.

Judgment reversed.

Luke and Bloodworth, JJ., concur.

Williams was convicted on an accusation which charged him with having in his possession, custody, and control intoxicating liquor. From the evidence it appeared that he and another man were sitting on a log or stump about twenty yards from a still, when they were discovered by officers, one of whom carried a shotgun, and it was testified that when the defendant saw the officer with the shotgun he ran. They had just been sawing wood. Wood of the same kind, freshly cut and about three feet in length, was found at the still, with a fruit jar of liquor and about 3000 gallons of fermenting mobby, apparently ready to run. There was no sign of wood having been cut anywhere else about the still. The defendant, in his statement at the trial, said he lived about twenty-five miles away, in Jefferson county, and, having lost his job at a sawmill, he was going to Wrightsville, to get work, when he saw a man sitting on a log, waiting for another man. “I helped him saw one block. I saw the officers. I didn’t even know the still was there, had never seen it, had no interest in it. I didn’t know there was any liquor there, had only been there just a few minutes. I was in a strange community, and when I saw these men coming with their guns, it frightened me, and I ran.”

C. S. Claxton, for plaintiff in error,

cited: 25 Ga. App. 558; 31 Ga. App. 784; 27 Ga. App. 581, 583; 2 Ga. App. 554; 25 Ga. App. 558 (3).

J. Boy Bowland, solicitor, contra,

cited: 32 Ga. App. 25, 74; 29 Ga. App. 24.