Case Name: Glover v. The State
Court: Court of Appeals of Georgia
Jurisdiction: Georgia
Decision Date: 1921-04-14
Citations: 26 Ga. App. 676
Docket Number: 12133
Parties: Glover v. The State.
Judges: Broyles, O. J., and Bloodworth, J., concur.
Reporter: Georgia Appeals Reports
Volume: 26
Pages: 676–677

Head Matter:
12133.
Glover v. The State.
Decided April 14, 1921.
Indictment for burglary; from Bibb superior court — Judge Mathews. January 5, 1921.
Julius Glover was convicted under an indictment which charged him with having broken and entered the smokehouse of J. N Davis and taken from it certain flour, lard, hams, and side meat, with intent to steal. His brother, Reese Glover, testified, in part: “I am charged with my brother with breaking into Mr. Davis’s smokehouse. . . On the night of the 24th of May of this year I saw my brother Julius; my brother came to my house . . about 11 o’clock, . . and he asked me to come and go with him. . I went on up there . . and he was at the smokehouse. . . I stood at the door and he got 50 pounds of flour and 100 pounds of lard, and . . he got some meat. I don’t know what he did with it. He left there with it. His wagon was down the road there somewhere. He carried it in the direction of the wagon. I suppose he unlocked the smokehouse to get in it. The door was not unlocked. He was there before I got there. . The door was open. . . He was not in a wagon when he came to my house. I live with Mr. Davis on his place; it is not very far from Mr. Davis’s dwelling house, it may be about 200 yards. . . Julius went through the path that goes through the woods to my house, and that was the way he went back. I didn’t see the wagon. I don’t know where he carried the stuff. I didn’t go with him any further. . . I didn’t give him the key. ■ Standing around there looking is all that I did. . . He took three turns to carry it.”
None of the stolen property was found, so far as appeared from the evidence, but there was testimony as to traces of flour and of a wagon and a mule in the road for some distance from the premises of J. N. Davis, and as to flour on the defendant’s hands and his being in a wagon and driving a mule' the next day after the taking of the things from the smokehouse. Davis testified that he lived about seven miles from Macon, and that on the 25th of May between 12 and 1 o’clock in the day he met the defendant with a wagon and a mule in the road about 5 miles from Macon, peddling cabbages, potatoes, and onions; “he had a stiff-kneed mule in his hind foot, and that heel hardly ever touched the ground; it walked on that tip; . . the crippled foot was the left foot;” the mule could be tracked “ by the foot, and the same foot.” There had been rain the preceding night. The witness further testified: “We had his house searched, but we couldn’t find anything. I didn’t see any flour in his wagon. I saw flour all over his hands and in the crack of his hands. They were all cracked open. . . I called the sheriff’s attention to it. . . His brother Reese Glover lives with me. . . I had two sets of keys to the smokehouse, . . and Reese had mine to feed with, and three or four weeks before this happened my wife’s bunch of keys disappeared. . . I never found the keys that were lost.” The deputy sheriff, who arrested the defendant, testified that Mr. Davis called his attention to the defendant’s hands, and “ he looked like he was handling flour, or lime, white, in the cracks of his hands.”

Opinion:
Luke, J.
While there is no substantial merit in the special grounds of the motion for a new trial, the circumstances in this case relied upon by the State to corroborate the testimony of the accomplice, as to the defendant's participation in the burglary, were insufficient to warrant a verdict of guilty; and therefore the judgment denying a new trial must be reversed.
Judgment reversed.
Broyles, O. J., and Bloodworth, J., concur.
John B. Cooper, W. O. Cooper Jr., for plaintiff in error.
Charles H. Garrett, solicitor-general, contra.