55 Ga. 380 | Ga. | 1875
Scroggins, as we gather from the i’eeord, is a colored girlpoor, and without means. She was arrested for an assault and battery upon a white girl, and carried before a justice of the peace living in the militia district in which the county
The accused applied to the judge of the superior court for a certiorari, alleging as error that the affidavit was not attested by any officer authorzed to administer oaths; that the waiver on the accusation was not in the words prescribed; that the verdict was contrary to law and to evidence, and that the punishment was excessive and unusual.
The judge, before acting on the petition, received a communication from the justice of the peace, in which the justice asserted that, in point of fact, the affidavit was sworn to before him, and that he failed to attest it by oversight. In refusing his sanction, the judge referred to this statement of the justice as an explanation.
The evidence was conflicting; that for the state showing that the defendant was one of four girls passing along the sidewalk, and, on meeting a young lady, that the defendant brushed up against her and then turned and struck her; the evidence for the defendant showing, on the contrary, that she was one of a party of three girls, and that she neither brushed up against the young lady nor struck her.
Let the judgment be reversed.