145 Ga. 78 | Ga. | 1916
Lead Opinion
W. A. Boberts was indicted for the offense óf murder in the slaying of Jim Wilkes. On the trial the jury returned a verdict of guilty, and recommended that the prisoner be punished by imprisonment for life. He made a motion for a new trial, which was overruled.
We can not hold, under the evidence, that there was no proof of venue authorizing the charge complained of. The witness
J. A. Kinsey, for the defendant, testified that he lived in Echols county; that he was familiar with what was known as the ' county line, and had known that as the county line for thirty-odd years. From general repute in the community, and from what witness knew about it, the county line is about six or eight feet from where the body of Jim Wilkes was lying; witness did not see the body, but, two or three hours after the killing, went to where the killing was said to have occurred, and found a patch of blood, which was six or eight feet from the county line, over in Echols county. “The lane that goes in front of the house where Wilkes had been living, on Eoberts’s place, is a long one, and was the
Allen Westberry, for the defendant, testified that he knew the line dividing Echols and Lowndes counties; that Wilkes fell about 12 feet from the line in Echols county; and that his father, who owned land there on the Echols county side, had pointed out the line to him. “The lane is the boundary line on one side of the road. One side of the road is the boundary. As well as I can remember, the line of Lowndes, if it were surveyed out, would go right about through the edge of that lane, or that house where Mr. Eoberts and Mr. Wilkes were living. The house is in Lowndes county. That is where they first started the conversation; then they went on down the lane, and Bill [Eoberts] was trying to reason with him, and then the shooting took place. . . All the time that Eoberts was going down the lane with him. . . I was walking right along behind them. . . All the time that Mr. Eoberts was going down the lane with Jim Wilkes, I did not see the pistol. I heard the pistol when he shot Jim Wilkes, I heard the noise of it. I was back behind about eight or ten feet. I don’t remember that I said a minute ago that I followed them down the lane. I was going on down the lane behind them. They were ahead of me. It was not dark, it was dusk. There
While several of the witnesses, as will be seen, testified directly that the body of the dead man was lying in Echols county, there is evidence from which the jury would have been authorized to find that the shooting which resulted in Wilkes’s death was done while Wilkes and Eoberts were walking down the road frequently referred to as the lane. And two or more witnesses testified that the lane was the dividing line between the counties; a lane ten or fifteen feet broad. One or more of the witnesses, it is true, testified that the Lowndes county line was on the side of the lane farthest from where the dead body was lying. But the jury had the right to find that the lane itself was the line between the two counties. If in laying off the county the authorities and the surveyor having the work in charge should, without surveying the line between two given points, adopt a road or lane between those two points as the line of the county, and while in that road one man should shoot and kill another in circumstances which make the shooting a crime, the slayer could be indicted and conviction be had in either county, under the statute stated in substance in the charge excepted to. Not only does the evidence of the witnesses, already quoted, tend to show that the offense was committed in the lane or road, which other testimony tended to show was the county line, but the statement of the defendant himself tends to show that the lane was the place where the shooting occurred. In part, that statement is as follows: “I did not tell him that he could get a mule, or I did not tell him that he could not; he kept going off down the road, and in a few minutes he would come back and go towards Westberry’s house, and he kept on, and he made and jumped out of the buggy and put in to cussing, and we walked down the road, and he pulled out his knife and put in to cussing right, and I could not reason with him, and he jumped on me and he tried to cut me, and I shot him.” If the lane or road was the line between Echols and Lowndes counties (and there
Judgment reversed.
Concurrence Opinion
I specially concur in the holding in the first division that the evidence was sufficient to establish the venue, but I can not agree with all that is said in the opinion on that subject. I agree to the other rulings in the case.
Concurrence Opinion
concur in the judgment of reversal, but dissent from the ruling announced in the first headnote.