Court Opinion

ID: 9596344
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-22 00:48:33.794219+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:01:35.076022
License: Public Domain

Jordan, Presiding Judge,
concurring specially. This court in Cannon v. State, 113 Ga. App. 701 (3) (149 SE2d 418), held that numerous items of personalty in a building as shown by a photograph thereof was sufficient to authorize a finding that such personalty had some value. In this case we need not rely upon a photograph since there was positive uncontradicted testimony that one of the buildings entered contained a safe, and that the other contained a safe, a set of Venetian blinds, a telephone, a fan, crowbars, and screw drivers. Courts can take judicial notice of facts within universal common knowledge and experience. A mere modicum of common knowledge dictates the conclusion that the articles described above have some intrinsic value even though the exact value of the items is not shown.
The courts of this State have taken judicial notice that moonshine whisky is an alcoholic beverage manufactured contrary to law and has value; of the time when the sun rises and sets; that a cow is a female animal with cloven hoofs; that craps is a game played with dice; that crops mature in Georgia in late *816summer and fall; that in Georgia tobacco is usually sold at auction in a warehouse; that many hogs are black and white spotted; that turpentine is not yielded by a cypress tree; that money is a thing of value; that a “quarter” as indicative of value means twenty-five cents; that the value of a dollar greatly decreased between October 1919 and May 1920; that poker chips used in a card game are things of value; and many other similar matters of common knowledge. Citations are omitted, but see annotations under Code § 38-112.
As Chief Judge Hill said in Sims v. State, 1 Ga. App. 776, 777 (57 SE 1029), “We do not think the intellect would be greatly fatigued in coming to the conclusion that the word ‘quarter,’ as used in the testimony, meant twenty-five cents.” Likewise we can see no great strain upon the intellect of this court in concluding that the buildings burglarized in this case contained property that was of some value, and that the jury was authorized to so conclude.