110 Ga. 883 | Ga. | 1900
Almand was indicted for the offense of larceny after a trust delegated. The specific charge was, that he had been entrusted by the Gate City Oil Company with certain ■checks on banks in the city of Atlanta, at different times and for different amounts of money, for the purpose of using the funds represented by said checks in purchasing and shipping cottonseed to the bailor. He was convicted, and moved for new trial on a number of grounds. Inasmuch as it is our opinion that the verdict was without evidence to support it, we do not find it necessary to consider and pass upon the other grounds of the motion. While the indictment charges that a number of ■checks described in that instrument were misappropriated, the State relied for conviction mainly on the appropriation to his own use by Almand of one certain check for the sum of two hundred and fifty dollars, dated November 29, 1898, which it was ■shown was delivered to the accused and disposed of by him in the county of Fulton. It appears from the brief of evidence
There can be no question that, under the evidence, the check was delivered to the accused for the purpose of purchasing cottonseed for the oil company, and it can not be denied that this specific check was delivered by the accused to one of his creditors and went to pay a personal debt. It must be noted, however, that it takes more than this to constitute the offense with which the accused was charged. Undoubtedly the check was technically converted from the use to which it was intended by the owner to have been put; but it is only when a fraudulent conversion has been made that a criminal offense is committed. If nothing more appeared but that the cheek was intrusted for the designated purpose and the bailee converted it to his own use, the conversion would be deemed fraudulent. But if the oil company had received in cottonseed the full value of the money which it had .given to the accused with which to purchase the seed, how can it be said that its money was fraudulently converted ? In other words, if the oil company gave the accused a given sum of money for the purpose of purchasing cottonseed for its use, and' the accused, with his own or the money of some one else, purchased and shipped to it cottonseed of the full value of the money furnished, what difference can it make to the company whether the identical money which it delivered or the money of the accused paid for the seed ? In any event it had, under the evidence, what it was entitled to demand from the accused in return for its money; and if in making these purchases the accused used his own money, or the money of some one else, and furnished the oil company all the seed which it could require of him, the fact that he used “the money, specifically given for the purchase, to reimburse himself or another for the sum which he had paid out for the benefit of the oil company can not make any difference to that company. While such a proceeding might be a technical conversion, it could in no sense be a fraudu
Reversed.