Case ID: ga-app_28/html/0440-01.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

13209.
    Harrison v. The State.
    Confiscation; from city court of LaGrange —• Judge Duke Davis. December 10, 1921.
    This was a proceeding to condemn and sell a motor-vehicle which the petition alleged was conveying "intoxicating liquor while Ed Harrison, the alleged owner of the vehicle, was operating it. Harrison, in his answer, denied the allegations of the petition. The ease was tried by the court without a jury, and the trial resulted in a judgment condemning the vehicle and ordering that it be sold., Harrison made a motion for a new trial on the usual general grounds and the ground that the court erred in excluding certain testimony.
    From the evidence it appeared that the sheriff and others saw Ed Harrison drive to a certain church a car containing other persons and stop the car there, and that Jerry Traylor got out of the car, went from it “a piece,” turned back, took a bottle from the back of the car, and ran with it through some bushes, and the sheriff quickly followed Traylor and found a bottle of whisky lying by the side of a path, whereupon he arrested Harrison and the others in the car and seized the car; that Harrison had made several trips back and forth in the same direction; that on seeing the sheriff he made, no effort to leave, and that he said they “took Jerry up on the other side of the creek,” and he “did [not?] know Jerry had any whisky when he got in the car.” . Harrison testified: “ I did not see any liquor. I did not have any liquor in the car. I know that Traylor did not carry any liquor in his hand. They told me he was Jerry Traylor. I did not know who he was. I did not go back and forth to the church but one time, and that was to take my wife. . . I was on the front Seat of my car, and this negro who they said was Jerry Traylor jumped on the running board two or three hundred yards from the church, and I told him, if he was going to ride, to get in the car, the running board was weak. If he had any liquor, I did not know it.” Other witnesses who were in the car testified that they did not see any liquor taken from it. There was evidence as to the good character of the defendant.
   Luke, J.

The evidence in this case did not authorize the finding and judgment of the trial judge; and for this reason it was error to overrule the motion for a new trial.

Judgment reversed.

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

Henry Reeves, for plaintiff in error.

L. L. Meadors, solicitor, contra.