Case ID: ga_54/html/0281-01.html
Source: Caselaw Access Project
Author: {"author": "McCay, Judge.", "license": "Public Domain", "url": "https://static.case.law/"}
Date Created: 2024-08-24T03:29:51.129683

Augustus Neal, plaintiff in error, vs. The State of Georgia, defendant in error.
    1. It was not error in the judge, on the trial of one for an assault and battery-in whipping his own child, a girl ten years old, with a saw twenty-two inches long and three-fourths of an inch wide, to charge the jury that if there was no good reason for the whipping, one lick with such an instrument was unlawful.
    2. The verdict in this case is fully justified by the evidence.
    Criminal law. Assault and battery. Parent and child. New trial. Before Judge Pottle. Warren Superior Court. October Term, 1874.
    Neal was placed on trial for the offense of assault and battery. He pleaded not guilty. The evidence showed that Neal, a large and powerful man, left his daughter, a child ten years old, at home with his wife, her step-mother; that before leaving, he locked up all his provisions in a chest, which he told the little girl.not to open; that during his absence, the wife, having nothing for her and the child to eat, commanded the latter to break open the chest to get something, which she did; that Neal, on his return, beat the girl with an old saw twenty-two inches long and three-fourths of an inch wide, breaking the skin in several places, and leaving the prints of ,the saw-teeth on her shoulders and back; that tire step-mother sent for the marshal of Warrenton to stop him, who heard the child’s screams before reaching the place, and on arriving found Neal still beating her in a violent and passionate manner, in spite of her cries for mercy.
    The court charged the jury, in substance, that if the breaking open of the chest under the circumstances above stated, was the only cause for the whipping of the child by the defendant, then one lick with the instrument charged to have been used, was unlawful, and they ought to find him guilty.
    To this charge the defendant excepted. Error is assigned upon this ground of exception.
    ■ Whitehead & Hartridge, by brief, for plaintiff in error.
    Samuel Lumpkin, solicitor general, by John C. Reed, for the state.
   McCay, Judge.

We have nothing to add to what is stated in the head-note in this case. The weapon used to inflict this whipping was a weapon none but a brute would use on such a child. It was a cruel and unlawful thing to inflict chastisement with. The judge did not say that one lick with such a weapon made the defendant guilty, but that it was unlawful, and so it was. We think, too, the verdict right. Even if a whipping was justifiable, and we would not go closely in a matter of this kind, as a very large margin must be left to the judgment of itlie parent, such a whipping with such a weapon was a cruel ¡and outrageous abuse of the parental authority, and made the ¡perpetrator of it guilty.

Judgment affirmed.