Case ID: ga-app_34/html/0224-02.html
Source: Caselaw Access Project
Author: {"author": "\n      Bloodworth, J.", "license": "Public Domain", "url": "https://static.case.law/"}
Date Created: 2024-08-24T03:29:51.129683

16547.
    Hartline v. The State.
    Decided July 29, 1925.
    Indictment for making liquor; from Dade superior court—Judge Tarver. April 28, 1925.
    According to the evidence, officers went to a still a short time before daybreak, found no one there, and, after waiting about three hours, saw the defendant and another man drive up in a wagon and begin unloading it a short distance from the still—about as far as across the court-room. They unloaded sugar, malt, and 'several cans and kegs, and were then arrested. It was testified that the still was complete and ready for operation, except that it needed filling up, and there was no fire in the furnace. “It looked like it had been running a month or so.” The officers found “about 7,000 gallons of beer about the place, part of it ready to run,” and in a shack they found some whisky in a can. The defendant, when arrested, began laughing, and he seemed to have been drinking. His statement at the trial was: “I went down and took a load of potatoes. A fellow up there wanted me to haul a load of sugar, told me he would give me one dollar a sack to haul it. I hauled it for him, took it to my house, and put it in the barn. He said he would come and tell me where to take it to. He went on down there, and then he told me to take this up there and unload it, and he would wait until I come back. When I got there these fellows were down there and they caught me, and that fellow, he run off. I never seen him any more, the one I was hauling sugar for."
   Bloodworth, J.

The indictment charged the defendant with manufacturing intoxicating liquor. The jury returned a verdict of attempting to manufacture such liquor. The evidence is not sufficient to support the verdict rendered, and the court erred in overruling the motion for a new trial.

Judgment reversed.

Broyles, G. J., and Luhe, J., concur.

Counsel for the plaintiff in error contended that if any crime was committed, it was complete, and no conviction of an attempt was authorized by the evidence; and cited Penal Code (1910), §§ 19, 1061. Section 1066 of the Penal Code, and Smith v. State, 28 Ga. App., 125 (2), were cited, contra.

B. T. Brock, J. M. Lang, for plaintiff in error.

O. 0. Pittman, solicitor-general, contra.