Court Opinion

ID: 9583451
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-21 22:38:48.614715+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T13:39:01.553197
License: Public Domain

Deen, Judge,
dissenting. The State’s witness, a narcotics agent, came to the apartment occupied by Tant and Boatner at Boatner’s request. Boatner invited the witness to a back room where there was a girl, another man, Tant and himself. The defendants were students at a local college. A pipe containing a small amount of a marijuana derivative was passed around, each person taking a puff, and the empty pipe returned to the girl who refilled it from a vial in her pocketbook, exhausting the container of its contents. She then lit it and passed it around. Tant, Boatner and the witness put the pipe to their lips. The witness testified that he drew smoke into his mouth, he did not inhale it, he did not know whether Tant and Boatner inhaled it or not, he forthwith arrested the occupants because "the evidence was about to be exhausted,” and retrieved some residue scrapings from the pipe later identified as hashish. The girl admitted sole ownership of the marijuana derivative. Everybody denied ownership of the pipe or knowing to whom it belonged; it was described as just lying around, as sort of communal.
The operative statute is Code Ann. § 79A-803 which forbids any person to "manufacture, possess, have under his control, sell, prescribe, administer, dispense, or compound” any narcotic drug ex*763cept as authorized within the statute. "Use” of the drug is not a penal offense. The question is whether receiving a lit pipe momentarily to take one or two puffs is possession or control of the drug within the meaning of the statute. The statute is the same in form as Code § 58-201 which forbids any person to "have, control or possess. . . whether intended for personal use or otherwise” intoxicating liquors. Under the latter statute in Mikell v. State, 94 Ga. App. 627 (95 SE2d 691) the conviction of a defendant for possession and control was reversed where evidence showed that while the defendant was eating supper another person came in and offered him a drink and he accepted, there being no evidence that the liquor belonged to the defendant. The case was held controlled by Graham v. State, 150 Ga. 412, 413 (104 SE 248) where it was held that "whiskey may be . . . taken from the hand of another merely for the purpose of drinking the whiskey. In the circumstances last supposed, the act of taking whiskey from the hand of another is merely incident to the act of drinking the whiskey, and can in no proper sense be held to be within the inhibition of a criminal statute which declares that it shall be unlawful 'for any . . . person or individual ... to have, control or possess, in this State, any of said enumerated liquors or beverages.’ The legislative intent and purpose is manifested when the words 'have,’ 'possess,’ and 'control’ are used in association.” Under these cases a verdict of reversal is demanded.
I am authorized to state that Presiding Judge Hall and Judge Eberhardt concur in this dissent.