Court Opinion

ID: 9865607
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-09-25 19:06:48.972119+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T13:40:37.623344
License: Public Domain

ON MOTION FOR REHEARING.
In the motion for rehearing counsel for the movant states that he specifically excepts to the ruling and finding of this court that there was sufficient evidence upon which to base a conviction “for an attempt to distill whisky,- rum, and brandy; ” and the movant contends that there was “no evidence whatever upon which to base such a finding.” He contends, “in other words, this court has simply supplied something that is missing entirely from the evidence.”
It would seem from this record that counsel for the movant has webbed himself within his own inconsistent positions. In the first ground of his amended motion for a new trial, he assigned error because the court charged the jury the law with reference to the manufacture of “whisky, rum, and beer.” In the second, third, and fourth grounds he assigned error as follows:
“(2) Because the court erred in failing to charge the jury that the defendant might be found guilty of the offense of attempting to distill, manufacture, or make the liquors referred to in the indictment, the same being a misdemeanor, and movant, shows that under the testimony *132the jury might have found him guilty of such an offense, and it was error, harmful and prejudicial to him, to fail to so charge the jury in reference to the offense of an attempt to commit the offense charged in the indictment.
Decided June 27, 1946.
Rehearing denied July 23, 1946.
James Maddox, for plaintiff in error.
H. L. Lanham, Solicitor-General, contra.
“ (3) Because movant insists that under the evidence in the said case the same does not show or warrant a conviction of the offense charged in the indictment, but that at the most only shows an attempt to commit the offense so charged, and that the court nowhere in its charge gave the jury any instructions in reference thereto, and that the same is error, harmful and prejudicial to movant, and that, under said evidence that he could only have been convicted of an attempt to commit the offense alleged.
“(4) Because the court erred in failing to charge in connection with the forms of verdict that the jury might render in said cause that movant might be found guilty of the offense of attempting to commit the offense • charged in the indictment, and that said failure so to charge was harmful and prejudicial to movant, and that movant then and there excepted to said failure to so charge, now excepts, and assigns error thereon.”
Counsel for the movant did not abandon these grounds in his argument, but insisted upon them enthusiastically to the following purport: He cited and quoted the Code, § 27-2507, which deals with an attempt to commit a crime, and after having also cited decisions with reference to the provisions of this section, further said: “But that the evidence shows that this case comes within the Code section in reference to attempt to commit crimes, and that the defendant was prevented and intercepted from executing the same' and that the same would apply as to the second, third, and fourth grounds of the amended motion.” It will thus be seen that, instead of this court arbitrarily supplying something that the record did not support, we followed in our original opinion the assignments of error of counsel for the movant. This court, after a careful consideration of the case, in the original instance agreed that counsel was right in his assignments of error in special grounds 2, 3, and 4. We have not changed. We still think that he was right, but that he is altogether wrong in substituting some other theory inconsistent with his original position.

Rehearing denied.

Broyles, G. J., and MacIntyre, J., concur.