41 S.E.2d 181 | Ga. Ct. App. | 1947
The court erred in refusing to continue the case.
When the case was called for trial on July 25, 1946, Mr. Anderson, counsel for the defendant made to the court the following motion: "We would like to make a motion for continuance, if the court pleases, on the following grounds: This offense just happened last Saturday night, and he [defendant] was placed in jail at that time and did not have an opportunity to employ counsel before Monday. I was not employed in the case until Tuesday and I haven't had an opportunity to talk to Mr. Cassidy [defendant] and to get the real facts in the case, and Mr. Brannen is also in the case with us. Mr. Brannen has been tied up here in court, and *690 I've had some business in court, and for those reasons we haven't had an opportunity to go into the case and really study it and really know what the facts are and the law in the case. For that reason we ask the court to grant us a continuance at this term. This, of course, is not made for the purpose of delay. We are asking it as our right, as the law gives us this right to ask for it, under the lack of time to prepare the case, and for that reason we are asking for a continuance of the case at this term." The motion was denied, and that judgment is assigned as error in a special ground of the motion for a new trial, the defendant having been tried and convicted of the offense charged, and his motion for a new trial having been overruled.
In Waldrip v. State,
In Cummings v. State,
While the facts of the above-cited cases are not on "all fours" with the facts of this case, they are sufficiently alike to make the ruling in the cited cases applicable here; and, in our opinion, the court should have granted the motion for a continuance, or should have postponed the trial until another date — a week or two — so *691 that counsel for the accused would have had time to investigate the facts of the alleged crime and the law applicable thereto.
The error in denying the motion rendered the further proceedings in the case nugatory.
Judgment reversed. MacIntyre and Gardner, JJ., concur.