57 Ga. App. 489 | Ga. Ct. App. | 1938
The defendant Prank Scott was charged with having, controlling, and possessing intoxicating liquor. He was convicted; his motion for a new trial was overruled and he excepted.
Joe Smith, an officer and a witness for the State, testified: “I got a search warrant and asked the sheriff to go to Prank Scott’s house with me. We drove up in front of Prank Scott’s house and I got out of the automobile and started to the house. His wife
The defendant contends that the judge should have charged the law of circumstantial evidence without request for the reason that the State was depending entirely upon such evidence for conviction. “Circumstantial evidence is more clearly defined from its results than by a definition of the phrase itself. It is that evidence that tends to prove the facts in issue by proving other facts or circumstances that, according to the common experience of mankind, usually attend the facts in issue, affording a basis for a reasonable inference by the court or the jury that the facts in issue actually occurred.” 2 Wharton’s Criminal Evidence (10th ed.), 1632, § 871. “Circumstances are but minor facts, although the words, facts, and circumstances are used interchangeably in the phrase, ‘circumstantial evidence.’ When we speak of a circumstance, we have in mind a minor fact that relates to or is connected with the main fact. When these minor facts point unerringly to a conclusion, then they are said to be certain.” 2 Wharton’s Criminal Evidence (10th ed.), 1635, § 874.
Direct evidence is that which immediately proves the ultimate fact, that is, the very fact at issue. Indirect or circumstantial
In these cases, rightly considered, we have particular precepts in the substantive law of many different subjects. The essential nature of these presumptions is not at all affected by the fact that these judicial conclusions are only presumptive, and are left open to controversy. “Presumptions of law are divided into conclusive presumptions and disputable [rebuttable] 'presumptions.” Black’s Law Dictionary, 3d ed. In this way the rule of presumption does not belong to the law of evidence but, takes its place as a subsidiary proposition alongside the main and fundamental fact, and is a rule of substantive law. This rule fixes, for the purpose of a particular inquiry, the effect of specified facts. Whisky in the home of the defendant is to be accounted, as regard to the inquiry, the same thing as knowing possession. It is its legal equivalent. Thayer on Common-Law Evidence, 1st. ed. 331. To prescribe and fix certain legal equivalence of the facts, is a very different thing from merely allowing that meaning to be given to them. The latter rule says that the question is left to the jury to say whether or not the fact that the whisky, which was found in the home of the defendant, was a permissable and usual inference that the whisky
A witness for the State testified at length to facts material to the State’s case. In the course of his testimony he stated that he had purchased whisky from the defendant’s wife in his (defendant’s) house, and further testified “I have been in the asylum. I suffer from fits. There is a. great many times that I do not know what I am doing.” Counsel for the defendant thereupon moved the court to exclude all of the testimony of this witness on the ground that it conclusively appeared that the witness was incompetent. The court thereupon ruled in the presence of the jury: “We will let the jury decide that.” We quote from the motion for
Judgment affirmed.