71 Ga. 164 | Ga. | 1884
Error is assigned on the refusal to grant a new trial to this defendant, who was convicted of forgery, because the court below erred in admitting the paper alleged to have been forged in evidence, and intimated an opinion on the evidence to the jury, and because the verdict is contrary to the law and the testimony.
The word “ Rowell,” the surname of the man against whom the order was forged, 'and the year 1883, are badly written, but enough appears to make them mean what the solicitor plainly wrote them out. So that it was for the jury to say whether the defendant, in uttering the paper produced in evidence, did so as an order on Wm. Rowe1!, of the date of 1883 ; and of this the testimony is so overwhelming that the verdict was demanded. Neither John Forsyth, a distinguished ex-governor and senator from Georgia, nor the late Chief Justice Lumpkin, of this court, could write a better hand, or put letters together more plainly than did this defendant in this order; yet a
It will not do to put a premium on bad hand-writing, and let every utterer of forged paper escape because the forger wrote badly. In the numerous cases cited by counsel for the plaintiff in error, a different name appears from that in the indictment, not a name or a figure badly written.
The evidence is overwhelming that the defendant is guilty, and where such is the case, even errors in the admission or rejection of testimony, or in the charge of the court, will not operate so as to require a new trial. 1 Ga., 574; 10 Ib., 429 ; 11 Ib., 331; 14 Ib., 43, 55, 145, 16 Ib., 368; 24 Ib., 333; 38 Ib., 631; 42 Ib., 587; 57 Ib., 156; 44 Ib., 383; 46 Ib., 26; 48 Ib., 498; 50 Ib., 119; 52/5., 597, 607; 56 Ib., 365; 58 Ib., 559; 59 Ib., 199.
Judgment affirmed.