Case ID: ga-app_13/html/0452-02.html
Source: Caselaw Access Project
Author: {"author": "\n      Bussell, J.", "license": "Public Domain", "url": "https://static.case.law/"}
Date Created: 2024-08-24T03:29:51.129683

5007.
    Stewart v. The State.
    Decided September 17, 1913.
    Accusation of receiving stolen goods; from city court of Tifton— .Judge B. Eve. June 2, 1913.
    From the evidence it appeared that certain hams stolen at night by Charlie Lane from the commissary of Bates Brothers at Solumco were found the next morning by the sheriff, back of Brown’s shanty, near the place from which they had been stolen, and that Charlie Lane was killed by a railroad-train that morning. The sheriff testified that he arrested John Stewart, the defendant, and that Stewart, while in jail, made the following statement to him voluntarily: “Susie Weems called me and told me to go and get some hams that Bichard Jerry had hid in the wood-pile, and I taken it and carried it to the house where Frank Brown and myself slept, and the negro that was in the house told me I could not leave it there, — to throw it out; and I threw it out in the weeds. I went from tjiere to Brookfield after the mail, and did not see the hams any more until the officers got it.” Melvin Burner testified that on the day after the commissary was broken into, the defendant brought to his (Burner’s) shanty a sack with something in it, and he told the defendant that it could not be left there. Minnie Burks testified that she saw the defendant go to Frank Brown’s shanty with something in a sack, and, a little later, saw him throw the sack in the weeds, and that her dog got hams from the sack. The defendant, in his statement at the trial, denied that he knew of the* theft, and said, that while in the discharge of his duties as watchman at the Solunico mill he passed the commissary of Bates Brothers about 5:30 o’clock in the morning, and found the door standing ajar, and he returned to the mill and reported to the superintendent what he had seen. “I went to the bookkeeper and he told me that when the officers came I had better tell them something, that when those kind of things happened that they got hold of somebody, and that’s why and how I came to make a statement to the officers. The only thing I had to do with the transaction, any shape, form, or fashion, was, Susie Weems called me to her house about 11 o’clock a. m., and told me that Bichard Jerry had bought some meat from a negro, and told me that he got suspicious of the negro he bought it from, and Susie Weems told me he put it in the wood-pile .in the yard, and that they had arrested Jerry, and she didn’t know what to do with the meat, and asked me to take it away from there and throw it away or carry it off and do something with it, and I told her that I didn’t want anything to do with it, but she insisted that I move it out of the yard, and I took ’it and carried it to Frank Brown’s shack (I slept there of a night), .which was not far away from Bichard Jerry’s.”
   Bussell, J.

The defendant was convicted of the statutory offense of receiving stolen goods, knowing them to have been stolen. The strongest evidence connecting him with the alleged offense was his statement to the sheriff. Since there is nothing in this testimony which authorizes the conclusion that the defendant knew that there had been a burglary, or knew that the hams in question had been, stolen, the verdict of guilty was not authorized. Judgment reversed.

G. G. Hall, for plaintiff in error. J. H. Price, solicitor, contra.