2 Ga. App. 651 | Ga. Ct. App. | 1907
The indictment charged that the defendant “unlawfully did defraud and cheat W. A. Holmes in the sum of one hundred and twenty-five dollars, by reason of the following deceitful means and artful practice, to wit: . . said Carlisle and Burpee represented to said Holmes that said Carlisle owned a certain red-colored horse mule, for the purpose of selling said mule to said Holmes; and, relying upon said representation being true, he, the said Holmes, bought said mule from said Carlisle and Burpee, and paid therefor the sum of one hundred and twenty-five dollars, when said representations were false, and said Carlisle
The evidence for the State shows that the defendant and one Burpee came to town leading the mule behind a buggy. The prosecutor asked the defendant what he would take for the'mule, and made him an offer for it. The defendant said that he had bought the mule out of a drove, and that no one else had owned it since. He said that it was his own mule. In response to an inquiry as to the mule’s eyes, he said, that he had worked the mule on his farm; that he bought it two or three years ago. Burpee ■also told the prosecutor that he had better buy the mule, that it would be a good trade; and finally the trade was closed at the original offer of $125. The prosecutor then delivered the mule into the care of one Cameron. About twelve months latqr, two men, one of them claiming to be the sheriff of an adjoining county, came and got the mule from Cameron. One Hendricks then testified that he was the man who'went with the sheriff to Cameron’s and got the mule; that it was his mule; that, shortly before the time the defendant sold the mule to the prosecutor, the mule had disappeared from -his home in the adjoining county; that he did not know how he got away; that he had mortgaged the mule to Burpee and also to his cousin; that the mule was taken from Cameron’s under the foreclosure _ of the mortgage which he had given his cousin; that while he did not know how the mule got away from his place, yet it was taken away without his consent; that he got home one night about eleven o’clock and found the lock to his barn broken and the mule gone. This was all the evidence for the State. The defendant stated that he bought the mide from Burpee out of a drove which Burpee had, and gave him $100 for it; that he did not know anybody had an interest in the mule or that anything was wrong with it; that he bought it in good faith and believed that it was his mule; that he told the prosecutor that he had bought the mule out of Burpee’s drove, which was a fact.
In a prosecution of this kind, knowledge cn the part of the deiendant that the representation made by him is false is material;