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109 Ala. 45

Wickard v. State

Supreme Court of Alabama

Decided November 15, 1895

Supreme Court of Alabama · decided 1895-11-15

Tried before Hon. Tiros. R. Rouli-iac. The indictment in this case is as follows : “The grand jury of said county charge that, before the finding of this indictment, that a game was played at cards or dice, and that Sam Wickard played at said game with cards or dice, or some device or substitute for cards or dice, at a tavern, inn, storehouse for retailing spirituous liquors, or house or place where spirituous liquors were at the time sold, retailed, or given away, or in a…

Relies on Dothard v. Denson · Smith v. State · Carr v. State

Good law ✅— No negative treatment on recordhow we know

Decided 1895-11-15

How this case has been cited

Cited by 15 later decisions — most recently February 1962

15 state decisions

7018951900191019201930194019501960decided

Later decisions citing this case, by decade. The current decade is in progress, and our corpus holds fewer opinions from the most recent years, so the latest bars are undercounted — not a real decline.

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HEAD, J.

¶1The indictment is sufficient. — Code. §§ 4052,4057; Rosson v. State, 92 Ala. 76.

¶2The challenge for cause of the named jurors who sat upon the trial of Robert Oliver, who had been tried and convicted of playing and betting at the same house, and within the same period, at which defendant is charged to have committed the like offense, ought to have been sustained, on proof of the fact upon which they were based. The court held the grounds insufficient in law, and overruled the challenges. They come within the principle, on the point involved, of Smith v. State, 55 Ala. 1. See also Dothard v. State, 72 Ala. 541; Carr v. State, 104 Ala. 4.

¶3When the State introduced evidence to show that the defendant played at a game of cards, and bet money thereat, at Neil Burns’ house, on a Saturday in December, 1891, it thereby elected to prosecute for that offense, and it was not competent thereafter to introduce evidence of other and distinct offenses, comprehended within the indictment, committed by the defendant, at the same or other places. — Smith v. State, 52 Ala. 384. It was, of course, competent for the State t-o prove, in any legitimate way, the public character of the house, if it possessed that character; and, to that end, may have proved that it was a house commonly resorted to for the purpose of card or dice playing and betting by any or all who were disposed to go there ; but the particular offenses of the defendant in playing and betting there cannot be individualized and put before the j ury, in thé manner-done in this case, without injuring the defendant, under the principle of the above cited authority.

¶4For the errors mentioned the judgment is reversed and the cause remanded. Let the defendant remain in custody until legally discharged.

¶5Reversed and remanded.

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