78 Va. 678 | Va. | 1884
delivered the opinion of the court.
The prisoner, Robert Hall, was indicted; tried and convicted upon the charge of horse stealing.
The record shows the following certificate of facts proved upon the trial: On the 9th day of May, 1883, the horse of P. B. Gravely, a well-known tobacconist, was tied in the open lot to the rear of the “ Cabell Warehouse,” Danville, Va. Robert Hall, the defendant, who was very much addicted to liquor, had driven the wagon of David Hardy to Danville, a distance of eighteen miles, with a load of tobacco, which, had been sold on the said 9th of May, at the said Cabell Warehouse. About 1:30 o’clock P. M., on the said 9th of May, the defendant, Robert Hall, started to drive the wagon of the said Hardy back home, but was so much under the influence of liquor that he could not drive, and Mr. Hardy took the reins and drove the wagon home himself. Hall, the defendant, attempted to follow the wagon on foot, but after he had gone about three-quarters of a mile from the town of Danville, stopped under the shade of a tree. About sunset, before the employees, numbering about thirty, had left the warehouse, and a good number of factory hands were washing themselves at the trough in the said yard of the said warehouse, the defendant, Robert Hall, came in and told Willie Flippen that he was going home. He told the said Flippen that he had been on the grand jury for two weeks. There had been no grand jury in session at that time; and Flippen testified that he was drunk, from his talk and because he staggered. Hall is then seen on the horse of P. B. Gravely, which had been tied, as we have seen aforesaid, and rode towards the
Willie Flippen, a negro man, who was a witness for the Commonwealth, testified that he knew the defendant, Robert Hall, in his own neighborhood, and never heard any harm of him, except that he would sometimes get drunk.
David Hardy, a witness for the defendant, testified that the prisoner (Hall) worked with him, and had come to him well recommended; he had never heard any harm of Hall except that he was fond of liquor. Upon the trial the defendant (Hall) filed a special plea in bar, that the indictment was not found or filed against him before the end of the second term of the court, at which he .has been held in jail to answer the said criminal charge; that on the 9th day of May, 1883, he was examined before R. E. Lee, at that time a magistrate of the town of Danville, for the supposed felony in the indictment mentioned, and was, on the said 9th of May, remanded for trial in the hustings court for the town of Danville; that the said hustings court was in session, and a grand jury was empaneled at this date;
We think the court erred in rejecting the plea and in sustaining the demurrer. The facts *set forth in the plea are admitted by the demurrer, and are fully proved by the evidence in the cause. The plea was filed under the 13th section, chapter 16, of the Criminal Code, and ought to have been allowed by the court and submitted to the jury. The prisoner having been shown by his plea to have been confined in jail on the criminal charge set forth in the indictment, which was found on the-day of October, 1883, since the 9th day of May, 1883, for two terms of the said court, at which grand juries were empaneled, without indictment, there being no excuse for said failure to indict, the prisoner was entitled to his discharge.
But, upon the merits as disclosed by the certificate of facts in the record, the verdict of the jury was plainly wrong, and against the evidence, which plainly and undeniably shows that the horse had been gotten on a drunken
Judgment eeveesed.