Case ID: ky_218/html/0585-01.html
Source: Caselaw Access Project
Author: {"author": "Judge Dietzman", "license": "Public Domain", "url": "https://static.case.law/"}
Date Created: 2024-08-24T03:29:51.129683

Johnson v. Commonwealth.
    (Decided February 25, 1927.)
    Appeal from Pike Circuit Court.
    Intoxicating Liquors — Conviction of Manufacturing Intoxicating Liquor is Not Sustained by Proof Only of Possession of Means for Mating it. — Proof of possession of means for mating intoxicating liquor is not alone sufficient to support a conviction for unlawful manufacture of intoxicating liquor, and where there is no other evidence, defendant’s motion for peremptory instruction should be sustained.
    F. M. BURKE for appellant.
    FRANK E. DAUGHERTY, Attorney General, and CHARLES F. ■CREAL, Assistant Attorney General, for appellee.
   Opinion of the Court by

Judge Dietzman

Reversing.

The appellant was convicted of the offense of unlawfully manufacturing intoxicating liquor and has. appealed.

Conceding without deciding the competency of the •evidence discovered by the search warrant issued herein, we are unable to distinguish this case oh its facts from the cases of Bartley v. Commonwealth, 215 Ky. 850, 287 S. W. 22, and Johnson v. Commonwealth, 210 Ky. 398, 276 S. W. 125, wherein we held that proof of the possession of the means for making liquor would not alone support a conviction for the unlawful manufacture of intoxicating liquor. The attorney general, with his usual •candor and fairness, concedes the point. It results that the appellant’s motion for a peremptory instruction •should have been sustained.

The judgment, therefore, is reversed, with instructions to grant the appellant a new trial in conformity with this opinion.