Court Opinion

ID: 9825139
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-09-01 12:10:25.423107+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:40:27.463609
License: Public Domain

On Rehearing.
The earnest appeal, on application for rehearing, by able counsel for this appellant, induces us to give further expression of our views in connection with the opinion rendered.
On the question of the affirmative charge we based our oioinion that there was sufficient evidence offered by the state upon which to sustain the verdict rendered upon the following facts, which are practically without dispute as shown by the record: The record shows that the officers of the law searched the dwelling house of defendant, and found therein a complete copper still, with worm, connecting pipes, and furnace, and the still was on the furnace. The still had been running, and was warm when the officers destroyed it. It was in a room adjoining his kitchen, and in the room also were three or four barrels of malt or beer. In addition to all this the officers found nearly a half gallon of the manufactured product, whisky, under the bed in one of the rooms in the defendant’s dwelling house. At the time of the search of de'fendánt’s home by the officers his (defendant’s) wife was there, she had been washing, and was then taking the clothes off of the line. While it is true the defendant was not at his home at the time of the search, there was evidence that one of the officers had seen the defendant in Decatur just after dinner of the evening the still and whisky was found in liis home, that at that time he -was driving a horse and buggy, which was described by witness, and that after the raid was made the same horse and buggy was tied to a fence on the road leading from the Trinity road up to defendant’s house,, but the defendant himself was not seen at that time, and there was no one with the horse and buggy then. There was no dispute as to time or venue, and we still maintain and hold that these incriminating facts were sufficient to authorize and require the court to submit the case to the jury for its determination. It is true the defendant denied all knowledge of the existence of the still, but his testimony was silent as to the whisky found under the bed in one of his rooms. He testified that he had left the place three weeks prior to the raid, and knew nothing whatever about the still, that the room in which the still was found had been built by another, one Goode, after ■ he had left the place, and that during the period mentioned he had stayed in Decatur with Will Johnson and Ed Mason, and had not returned to his home. Of course if all this is true his conviction should not have followed, but as to whether it was true or not was a matter of fact for the determination of the jury, and not one of law for the court to decide, as insisted upon by counsel for appellant.
As to the ruling of the court upon the admission of testimony touching the alleged flight of the defendant, we do not understand that any evidence offered in explanation thereof was disallowed. The testimony attempted to be introduced by defendant, and which was not permitted by the court’s rulings, related to alleged transactions between one Goode and the defendant, and as to what was said and done between these parties relative to an alleged indebtedness due defendant by Goode, and as to some trouble between these parties. These facts sought to be thus proven may have had the tendency to explain why defendant had left Goode’s place, if he did so leave, but could shed no light or have any bearing upon the alleged flight of the defendant from this state to a distant state, as the evidence is without conflict that the proposed testimony related to transactions between Goode and defendant prior to the time of the raid and the alleged flight of defendant, and' no sufficient connection between the two was shown which would have authorized the introduction of the proposed testimony even under the broad rule of evidence relating to flight announced by the Supreme Court in Goforth’s Case, supra. Moreover, it might be said that the evidence not allowed by the court came within the terms of that portion of the Go-forth Case, supra, where it is said:
“Of course a defendant, in such a case, cannot get before a court or jury his declaration that he is not guilty of the crime, or any other mere self-serving declaration tending to show that he had no connection with the commission of the corpus delicti, but he may show, as evidence tending to rebut the idea that his absence was in fact a ‘fleeing from justice,’ such acts and declarations of his while absent which may tend to show that his absence from the community was due to an entirely different cause.”
The alleged flight of this defendant as insisted upon by the prosecution was when *667lie loft tliis state for another state, and there was no pretenso or contention that at the time of the alleged occurrences between Ooode and the defendant, the testimony concerning which the court would not allow, he had fled or was a fugitive. To the contrary, it was shown by the state's testimony that on the day of the raid the defendant was actually seen in Decatur, Morgan county, by the deputy sheriff, and by his own testimony and that of his witnesses that at that time he had never left the community, and there was some evidence from which it could have been inferred that he was in near proximity of his home at the time of the raid, although not at that time actually seen. The horse and buggy, unattended, was near by, and it would not be a violent inference that he was also, for the reason that only a short period of time prior thereto he was driving this same horse and buggy in Decatur, when the officers started on their way to make the raid upon his home. The rule in Goforth’s Case provides:
"When a crime has been committed, and the state offers evidence tending to show that the defendant absented himself from the community in which the crime was committed, the value of this fact of flight depends entirely upon the purpose of the defendant in thus absenting himself from the community. The question as to why the defendant left, the community and remained away from it becomes a question for the jury, and so, when the state offers the fact of the defendant's flight from the community in evidence, the law allows both the state and the defendant to show all those things which the defendant said and did when he left, and while ate ay from the community, which tend to explain the quo animo of the flight, whether the absence of the defendant was due to his sense of guilt, or his desire to avoid, or through fear of, arrest, or on the other hand, whether his absence was due to other causes.”
We are of the opinion that the case was one for the jury, and that no ruling of the court affected the substantial rights of the defendant.
Application overruled.