36 S.E.2d 161 | Ga. Ct. App. | 1945
1. "The defendant in a criminal case has the right to make, without interruption, such statement to the jury in his defense as he sees fit and proper to make. He is not circumscribed or governed or restricted by the rules controlling the admissibility of evidence. It is error to interrupt him and exclude from the consideration of the jury a portion of his statement, so long as he confines himself to the transaction under investigation. The court may, however, prevent him from making wholly irrelevant statements entirely inapplicable to the case." Bradford v. State,
2. "While good faith may be pleaded as a defense by one prosecuted under the Penal Code (1910), § 781 [26-8116], for maliciously and wilfully injuring and destroying private property, a mere assertion of ownership, though made at the time the property is injured or destroyed, and subsequently repeated, does not demand a finding that the accused acted under an honest claim of right; especially in the absence of any evidence to support such claim. Woods v. State,
3. One who merely removes a post which was "put in" the ground preparatory to erecting a fence on a disputed land line, but does not injure or destroy the post, is not guilty of malicious mischief under the provisions of the Code, § 26.8116.
2. Headnote 2 needs no elaboration.
3. The post in question had not, at the time of its removal from the ground in which the prosecutor had "put" it, become incorporated into a fence so as to make it an integral part thereof. It, was as yet only a post, even though it might have been intended to have been later incorporated into a fence (a different entity from that of a mere post). Where the evidence did not show "some material and substantial injury" to the property described in the accusation, it did not support a conviction. The instant case is controlled by the ruling inPollet v. State,
Judgment reversed. Broyles, C. J., and Gardner, J., concur. *268