Court Opinion

ID: 9587534
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-21 23:23:21.209969+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:58:35.221669
License: Public Domain

Quillian, J.,
concurring specially. I concur in the result of the majority opinion. From the holding in Piedmont Hotel Co. v. Henderson, 9 Ga. App. 672 (6) (72 S. E. 51), a case of the nature we now consider, the arrest and detention are parts of a single legal transaction, elements of one offense. If the defendant arrested the person of another illegally, he could not then legally detain or imprison him. If he arrested such person legally, illegally detaining him would have the effect of converting the legal arrest into an illegal arrest.
The defendant’s animus or good faith in both making the arrest and detaining the prosecuting witness in this case was vital. The court should have so instructed the jury. One of the best settled rules of criminal law is that there can be no crime unless there was in the defendant’s conduct a union or joint operation of act and intent to violate the law or a culpable negligence on his part.
The court likewise erred in failing to instruct the jury as to the elements of the offense. In Habersham v. State, 56 Ga. 62 (2), the Supreme Court through Justice Bleckley said: “On the trial of a prosecution for aiding to escape from custody, the fact of custody, is for the jury, and so also is the legality of that particular custody. The court should acquaint the jury with the needful rules of law to enable them to distinguish legal from illegal custody, and let them make the application thereof to the facts in evidence.”
Certainly the holding is equally applicable to a cause of illegal arrest and detention.
*835In reference to the duty of the arresting officer to carry the accused before a magistrate, it was held in King v. State, 6 Ga. App. 332 (2) (64 S. E. 1001): “A peace officer, State, county, or municipal, who has arrested without a warrant, 'shall, without delay, convey the offender before the most convenient officer authorized to receive an affidavit and issue a warrant’, but the exigencies of the particular case may authorize him to imprison the person so arrested temporarily and for a reasonable time. Penal Code, §§ 899, 901; Moses v. State, ante, [6 Ga. App. 251] (64 S. E. 699)
The fourth headnote of Habersham v. State, 56 Ga. 62, supra, reads: "Custody by a private person after a legal arrest without warrant, becomes illegal if protracted for an unreasonable time, and whether the time was reasonable or unreasonable is a question for the jury, under proper instructions from the court as to the promptness which the law exacts in conveying the party arrested before a magistrate.”
It does not appear from the record that.the press of official business, or other exigencies of the case did not justify the defendant in leaving the prosecution witness in jail temporarily and for a reasonable time, and it was certainly a question for the jury as to whether less than an hour was a reasonable time in which to hold him in custody before carrying him , before a magistrate.
In Harris v. City of Atlanta, 62 Ga. 290 (3) four days, and in Ocean Steamship Company v. Williams, 69 Ga. 251 (9) twenty-six hours elapsed subsequent to the arrest before the person detained was presented to a magistrate. In both cases it was held to be a question for the jury whether the period of detention was reasonable.