Court Opinion

ID: 9681298
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-24 07:47:43.921399+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:17:33.153605
License: Public Domain

Gailok, Justice.
I respectfully dissent from so much of the majority opinion as justifies the conviction by application of the rule stated in Crocker v. State, 148 Tenn. 106, 251 S. W. 914.
“* * * that there is a presumption that the liquor belonged to the man of the house.” Majority opinion, 250 S. W. (2d) 561.
In my view, the evidence in the present case, both direct and circumstantial, clearly distinguishes it from the Crocker case. In the Crocker case, both the husband and wife, and only the husband and wife, were in physical occupation of the premises. It is the physical occupation, not the legal title or its incidents, which warrants an inference of possession of whisky found on the land. ’Since there was nothing in the State’s evidence *356to show that the whisky was stored on. the land by the husband, rather than by the wife, and since they, alone, were in physical occupation of the premises, this Court held that a presumption arose that the whisky was in possession of the husband, rather than in possession of the wife, because the husband was head of the family.
In the present case, the defendant husband was not in physical occupation of the premises at the time of the search and seizure. He was not on the premises at the time of the search, and it was stated in argument, that he had not been on the premises for more than a week. It was not a necessary inference that the whisky was in possession of either the husband or the wife, it was an equally reasonable inference that the whisky was in the possession of the man found on the premises at the time of the search and seizure. These facts and the reasonable inference drawn from them, in my view, clearly distinguish the case here from the Crocker case.
Since there is not a scintilla of evidence, direct or circumstantial, that the defendant was in actual or constructive possession of this whisky, I think the judgment should be reversed.