Court Opinion

ID: 9579222
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-21 21:52:50.401742+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T13:34:36.242631
License: Public Domain

MacIntyre, P. J.,
dissenting. The charging part of the accusation is that the defendant “did unlawfully offer for sale and possess for purpose of sale malt beverages known as beer, etc.” The State proved that the defendant had no license to deal in beer. The sheriff testified that he went to the house of the defendant with a search warrant, looking for whisky, and that when he, the sheriff, arrived at the outer screened door of the screened porch of the defendant’s house, the defendant came to *403the wooden door that led from the screened porch into the house, opened it, stuck his head out of the door and asked who was there. The sheriff thereupon identified himself as sheriff. The defendant slammed and locked the wooden door and “hollered to his wife.” The sheriff forced his way through the screen door and reached the wooden door. The defendant delayed opening the wooden door as requested by the sheriff, but did open it a few minutes later as the sheriff was about to force it open. The sheriff entered the house and went to the bathroom to search it, but the defendant’s wife had already entered and locked the door of the bathroom and delayed the sheriff’s entry into the bathroom. When she opened the bathroom door the sheriff entered, and he testified that he “found about a three-gallon pickle jar with fumes of whisky and a big-mouth pickle jar and the smell of whisky in the bathroom and in the jar.” He found in the refrigerator on the back porch of the defendant’s house 103 cans of beer; and in the closet in the dining room he found an additional 72 cans of beer, making a total of 175 cans of beer found in the defendant’s house. He found about 500 beer cans at the back of the defendant’s house. There were two houses “right behind” the house in which the defendant lived, but they were empty at the time in question. The defendant in his statement tó the jury on the trial said that those two houses belonged to him and that there were other houses close to his house. The sheriff also testified that there were quite a few cans in the ditches along the road that led by the defendant’s house; that the beer cans began at the defendant’s house and followed the road “up and down from his house,” and that there were beer cans in the ditches for a quarter of a mile; that 100 bottles were found inside the house, consisting of beer, whisky, and medicine bottles. The sheriff also testified: “In passing this [the defendant’s] house, I have observed cars and traffic in* and about the yard there.” Whence came so many empty beer cans in the ditches along the road in front of the defendant’s home? I do not think it reasonable to say that people from other vicinities were carrying so many beer cans from other vicinities, drinking the beer, and throwing the empty cans in front of the defendant’s house. I think it a reasonable hypothesis that those cans of beer were bought close *404by the ditches in which they were found, that the beer was drunk, and the empty cans were thrown in the ditches along the road in question. Why so many empty beer cans at this particular point? True there were some other houses in this vicinity. From which of these houses did the beer cans come? I think that the jury was authorized to say that they came from the house which had all of the indicia of keeping beer for sale, as shown by the evidence, and that house was the house of the defendant. There was no evidence or any intimation that any other house kept beer. The defendant said in his statement that he did not drink beer, but that his wife and mother-in-law did, and that they had 175 cans of beer, which had been gotten for his wife to give a party on Sunday; that “my daughter and her husband, from Birmingham, were coming up there and her sister and old man.” This seems to leave 175 cans of beer for only six people to drink. The defendant did not deny or explain in his statement to the jury the tell-tale empty bottles and cans in question except to say that “there were no beer cans in front of my house.”
In Brown v. Matthews, 79 Ga. 1, 8 (4 S. E. 13), Judge Bleckley, speaking for the court, said: “It not unfrequently happens that the testimony proves more than any one witness knows, or than is known to all the witnesses taken together. This is so perhaps in every instance where the evidence, though sufficient, is only circumstantial. Where the evidence is all direct, the jury can be no wiser than the witnesses, but they have to be wiser in order to find the truth of any fact upon circumstantial evidence alone. . . Frequently amongst the facts best proved is one which no witness has mentioned in his testimony, such fact being an inference from other facts.” Even if no one circumstance here was conclusive of the guilt of the defendant yet, when all of the circumstances are taken together, I think the jury , was authorized to find that the defendant possessed beer for the purpose of sale without a license. The defendant’s counsel contends “that the evidence adduced upon behalf of the State does not exclude the hypothesis that . . [the defendant] was a lavish entertainer,” but even so the reasonable hypothesis would be that the guests would drink the beer at the home of the entertainer and leave the empty cans *405there, and the unreasonable hypothesis would be for them to wait until they had reached the ditches of the public road in question to dispose of the empty beer cans; and if the defendant sold beer, it would be a reasonable hypothesis for at least some of his customers to dispose of the empty beer cans by throwing them in the ditches, as testified by the sheriff.' It seems to me that there was too much beer, too many empty beer containers, and too many other circumstances pointing to the defendant’s house as the one in that vicinity where beer was kept for sale, and that the jury was authorized so to find.