1 Ga. App. 553 | Ga. Ct. App. | 1907
Speaking for myself, — and I am authorized to say that my col
The Supreme Court, speaking through Justice Cobb, in the case of Roberts v. Roberts, 115 Ga. 263, says: “The reasons at the foundation of the rule which forbid a juror from sitting in a case where he is related to some one pecuniarily interested in the result of the suit would also apply in the case of a judge who was in a similar situation.” We are willing to go further and say that there are many other and even stronger reasons forbidding the judge to sit under such circumstances. We can not believe that the law presumes as a fact what we well know is rarely true, that the disqualified judge would lean to his kinsman, rather than to the other party in the cause; and we are therefore unwilling to hold, in the case of the judge, as the Supreme Court has held in the case of the juror, that the disqualification is presumptively a matter of benefit to the related party, of which he can not complain. It is probably true in the case at bar that Judge Brannen did not know of his relationship to the defendant, Olliff, until after the trial ended; certainly there is nothing in the record which indicates any failure on his part to give to the defendants that fair and impartial trial which they would have received at the hands of any other honest
Judgment reversed.