39 Ga. App. 541 | Ga. Ct. App. | 1929
(After stating the foregoing facts.) The act approved August 15, 1923 (Ga. L. 1923, p. 39), provides that “There shall be levied upon and collected from each person, firm, or corporation, engaged in selling cigarettes and cigars at retail, a tax of ten per centum of the sales price at retail of each package of cigarettes and each cigar sold by such dealer.” This act was amended by an act approved December 19, 1923, which provides that stamps shall be affixed to “each package of cigarettes and each box, package or other container of cigars.” Ga. L. 1923, Ex. Sess., p. 69. It is provided that “Any dealer who shall sell, or offer for sale, cigarettes or cigars without complying with the foregoing provisions shall be guilty of a misdemeanor” (Ga. L. 1923,
The record shows that the date of the acquittal which the defendant pleaded in bar was March 27, 1928, and the indictment in the present case charges that the offense was committed November 1, 1928, more than seven months after the acquittal under the first charge. It is needless to say that an acquittal on any charge does not authorize a defendant to commit a similar crime thereafter and obtain exemption from punishment by pleading the former acquittal as a bar. Since the indictment charged that the crime was committed after the acquittal pleaded in bar, the court properly sustained the motion to dismiss the plea of former jeopardy.
The 1st special ground of the motion for a new trial alleges that the court erred in not admitting in evidence the former accusation, referred to in the plea of former jeopardy, and the verdict of acquittal thereon. The plea of former jeopardy had already been disposed of on motion of the solicitor-general, and to that ruling the defendant had duly excepted, and the accusation and the verdict in the former trial were not material to the issues under consideration, and were properly rejected as evidence.
Under the note of the trial judge, there is no merit in the second special ground of the motion for a new trial, which complains of an excerpt from the charge of the court.
If the State had intended to exempt war veterans from payment of the State tax on cigars and cigarettes, the presumption is that the act providing for such tax would have specifically exempted them. Exemptions by implication are not favored. It will be noted that section 1888 of the Civil Code makes the same exemption apply to Spanish-American War veterans as applies to Confederate veterans. In Manus v. State, 7 Ga. App. 377 (66 S. E. 1037), this court held: “The license or certificate issued by the ordinary to a Confederate veteran, which permits him to peddle without paying county and municipal license taxes, does not relieve him from the payment of the tax of $200.00 imposed by the State upon retail dealers in “near beer’.” And in the opinion (p. 379) it is said: “The grant of the privilege authorized by the act of 1897 did not give the holders of veterans’ licenses or certificates a vested right in an exemption not included within the terms of the original grant. The act of 1897 dealt only with the subject of municipal and county taxes, and did not relate to the subject of State taxation or State license. . . A confederate veteran has all that was granted to him originally by the act of 1897, and the mere fact that the State has imposed a State tax, or may hereafter impose a State tax, upon certain articles upon which it has hitherto forborne to impose a license fee, does not legally affect the rights heretofore conveyed by the license to the Confederate soldier. The purpose of the act of 1897 was to give to the Confederate veteran who was entitled to the ordinary’s certificate the distinct advantage of relief from the payment of county and municipal taxes as to those articles upon the sale of which others might be taxed.” If the veterans of the various wars mentioned in section 1888 of the
From the foregoing it will be seen that the exemption of war veterans provided for in section 1888 of the Civil Code of 1910, does not include exemption from the State tax on cigars and cigarettes imposed by the act of 1923.
6. The evidence authorized the verdict and the court did not err in overruling the motion for a new trial.
Judgment affirmed.