124 Ga. 442 | Ga. | 1905
The plaintiff in error, Will Morgan, was tried in the city court of Americus, upon an accusation charging him with the offense of stabbing. The jury returned a verdict of guilty, and he made a motion for a new trial. Exception is taken to the overruling of this motion.
In the-argument of cases, counsel should be allowed considerable latitude of speech; and so long as-extraneous facts are not injected or improper language used, the trial judge should not interfere. The premises of the advocate should be founded upon some fact or group of facts brought to light upon the investigation; his conclusion, however absurd or illogical, goes to the jury as the result of his reasoning, and not as a statement of fact. The defendant’s counsel insisted before the,jury that the absence of the wounded man was a circumstance persuasive of the conclusion that, had he been present at the trial, he would have sustained the defendant’s plea of self-defense. In anticipation of this argument, the solicitor had urged that no such inference could be drawn from the injured man’s failure to appear to prosecute or testify. These conflicting deductions from, the circumstance of his absence were peculiarly within the jury’s domain, and exclusively for their solution. “It is customary to permit attorneys to comment upon the absence of witnesses, or their non-production, when they are shown to be cognizant of the facts in issue. It is a mere matter of argument, and may be discussed by either side, trusting to the good sense of the jury to properly estimate the value of such arguments.” Chicago R. Co. v. Krayenbuhl (Neb.), 98 N. W. Rep. 44. In the case of Inman v. State, 72 Ga. 269, it was held that it was legitimate for counsel in argument to allude to what had transpired in the case in the presence of the jury, from the time it was called through its entire progress. So liberal has been the practice of permitting a dis
Judgment reversed.