Case ID: ga-app_27/html/0596-02.html
Source: Caselaw Access Project
Author: {"author": "Luke, J.", "license": "Public Domain", "url": "https://static.case.law/"}
Date Created: 2024-08-24T03:29:51.129683

12665.
    STRIBLING v. THE STATE.
    A conviction of the offense of manufacturing alcoholic liquor is not supported by evidence that the defendant was getting ready to manufacture such liquor.
    Decided November 16, 1921.
    
      Indictment for making liquor; from Wilkes superior court — Judge Shurley. May 28, 1921.
    Stribling, the defendant, it was testified, told the sheriff, who found him at a still, that he “was going to make some whisky for his own use.” According to the testimony, he said that the still was his. It was a copper still of about 40 or 50 gallons capacity. At the same place were barrels which held about 50 gallons, meal, and “some beer or stuff they make beer with. . .' Some of this stuff was mixed up in both box and barrel. The. meal hadn’t been put in very long; it must have been mixed up the night before. He said there was a hundred pounds of sugar in there and the meal. The still was in a brick furnace; it was bricked in' clear up to the top, and there had been a fire there, but the mortar in the brick wasn’t dried. He said he had cooked the meal in it the night before and had put it in and put this water in. The water was clear, except that it had husks floating around in it.” Stribling told the sheriff that he had mixed this stuff to make whisky for his own use. When first seen, by the witnesses he was about 20 feet from the still, going to it with a sack on his right shoulder and a stick in his left hand, and the sack Had “something like bran in it.”
    
      H. E. Combs, Colley & Colley, for plaintiff in error.
    
      M. L. Felts, solicitor-general, contra.
   Luke, J.

Stribling was convicted of the offense of unlawfully distilling and manufacturing alcoholic liquors. The evidence did not sustain the conviction. At best, the evidence showed only that the defendant was getting ready to manufacture liquor. The allegation of the indictment not being sustained by the evidence, it was error to overrule the motion for a new trial.

Judgment reversed.

Broyles, C. J., and Bloodworth, J., concur.